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Chapter 28
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Silence of the Girls, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Mythology and Oppressed Perspectives
The Effects of Misogyny
Honor and Violence
Slavery and Dehumanization
Grief and Revenge
Summary
Analysis
Achilles, aboard the ship, follows Patroclus’s progress by watching his own plumed helmet. Patroclus drove the Trojans from the ships a good hour before, and Hector is fighting toward him. Achilles, speaking aloud, urges Patroclus to stop. Yet more hours pass while Achilles watches. All at once, he feels that he’s seeing the world from inside the helmet, buffeted by a sword and then running toward Troy. He forces himself to concentrate on his real physical surroundings: his water jug, the ship’s deck. Yet he still feels odd, and his hands look larger than usual.
Though Achilles has expressed a highly individualistic concept of masculine honor, choosing to protect his honor rather than fight to save the other Greeks, he feels so connected to Patroclus that he hallucinates that he’s in his armor with Patroclus—or perhaps he somehow is inside his armor with Patroclus (in some kind of supernatural sense). Achilles’s hands may look larger than usual, then, because Patroclus has larger hands than Achilles does.
Themes
Achilles tells himself that he needs to get out of the sun and drink more water—then he’ll “be himself again.” Abruptly, he’s struck by how strange yet appropriate that phrase is: he hasn’t felt like himself since he woke up that morning and saw Patroclus standing naked in front of his mirror. In a flashback, when Alcimus comes in with Achilles’s armor, Achilles dismisses him, choosing to put the armor on Patroclus himself. After Achilles puts the armor on Patroclus, Patroclus asks whether “they” would believe he was Achilles, and Achilles blurts, “even I believe it.” Patroclus stares in the mirror, apparently hypnotized—by his own appearance or by Achilles’s.
This scene poses a question: does masculine martial honor rely on how other people view you—your reputation, your myth—or is it intrinsic? Patroclus wants to know whether “they,” i.e. the Trojans, will be fooled into believing that he is Achilles because he hopes it will strike fear into their hearts and cause them to fight worse. When Achilles blurts “even I believe it,” he is both admitting his sense of extreme connection to Patroclus and suggesting that sometimes the appearance of honor or myth seems to outweigh the literal facts (namely, that Patroclus is not Achilles).
Themes
Achilles offers Patroclus his spear. Patroclus demurs but asks for Achilles’s sword. When Achilles fetches it, he aims it at Patroclus’s throat rather than handing it over and tells him again to leave the battle as soon as he has pushed the Trojans back from the ships—and never to fight Hector. When Patroclus agrees, Achilles gives him the sword. Achilles tells Patroclus to come back for lunch, and Patroclus laughs, but Achilles feels like Patroclus isn’t listening because wearing Achilles armor has made him feel as though they’re “equal[s].” They hug, tightly, and Achilles again asks Patroclus to come back. Then they walk out to meet the men.
Though Achilles loves Patroclus, he thinks that his armor has made Patroclus feel as though he and Achilles are “equal[s]”—which clearly implies that Achilles does not think of them as equals. That Achilles does not think of the person he loves and esteems most as an equal suggests that the honor hierarchy of ancient Greek culture—according to which the best warrior is worth the most—has poisoned his ability to have egalitarian relationships.
Themes
In the present, in the afternoon, Achilles is furious at Patroclus for having disobeyed him. He knows that in a state of meditative battle-frenzy, it’s impossible to stop fighting, and he thinks Patroclus may have entered that state—but he’s still furious. He imagines that after Patroclus returns, he’ll toast him in public but dress him down in private. Yet when he tries to imagine what he’ll say, he abruptly realizes he’s terrified he’ll never speak to Patroclus again. He gets into his bed, which still smells like Patroclus, and chants Patroclus’s name over and over.
Achilles believes he outranks Patroclus in their Greek martial honor culture, and so he briefly imagines harshly criticizing him for disobedience. Yet he is clearly also horrified at the thought of losing Patroclus; his almost childlike reaction at the thought of Patroclus’s death suggests that the possible death triggers memories of his mother Thetis’s childhood abandonment of him.
Themes
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Patroclus, in the thick of battle, hears Achilles calling his name. He loses his concentration. Suddenly, Hector appears. Patroclus can’t get Achilles’s sword up in time to block Hector’s spear, and Hector stabs him in the side, bringing him to the ground. Patroclus yells Achilles’s name.
Patroclus seems to hear Achilles calling his name exactly when Achilles is chanting his name back in the camp, a coincidence that implies the two men are in fact supernaturally connected, despite Achilles’s rejection of an egalitarian relationship and entirely individualistic concept of honor.
Themes
Back in the camp, Achilles hears Patroclus calling his name. He tells himself it must have been a seagull’s cry, though he knows it wasn’t. He tries to pray but can’t. Suddenly, he hears the men calling for him. He runs into the yard and up onto the ship to see the battle. A chariot is riding fast back toward the Greek camp, and Achilles is abruptly certain it is going to bring him “the worst words he’s ever heard.” He tries to will it to turn back, but he’s powerless against its progress, so he climbs down to the yard to wait.
Achilles hears Patroclus calling his name just as Patroclus cries it out on the battlefield, again emphasizing the men’s supernaturally close relationship despite Achilles’s individualistic obsession with his personal honor. Achilles’s certainty that the chariot is carrying “the worst words he ever heard”—implicitly, news of Patroclus’s death—foreshadows the intensity of Achilles’s grief at his friend’s killing.
Themes
