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Chapter 40
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
(Here the narration switches from Briseis’s perspective to the third person.) At dinner, no one can eat until Achilles does, so he pretends to eat. Afterward, he orders his companions Alcimus and Automedon away. Though he recognizes that Alcimus is good and brave (if foolish) and Automedon is an excellent charioteer (if uptight), he resents them both for not being Patroclus. As he is about to stand and leave himself, he notices an elderly man walk into the hall, whom he momentarily mistakes for his father Peleus. When the elderly man reaches Achilles, he gets on the floor and hugs Achilles’s knees in supplication. For a moment, Achilles sees himself from the outside, frozen “for all time” in this moment. He whispers, “Priam.”
Achilles’s inability to eat and his resentment of Alcimus and Automedon for not being Patroclus emphasize yet again his paralyzing grief. When Achilles momentarily mistakes the elderly Priam for his own father, King Peleus, it emphasizes that Prince Hector—whose corpse Achilles has been desecrating—was someone’s son just as Achilles is his father’s son. In other words, Hector is a human being with human connections that honor demands merit some consideration.
Themes
Achilles asks how Priam got inside. When his servants approach, not yet recognizing Priam, Achilles orders them away. Achilles asks again how Priam got inside, and Priam says he believes that he was protected by a god. Then he says he heard Achilles say “Father” when he walked into the hall. Achilles, who can’t remember speaking out loud, feels how intensely strange this encounter is. Priam says that Achilles’s father must be old like Priam himself by now, as Achilles will see when he returns home. Achilles thinks that he’s not coming home, but he doesn’t say so, not wanting his Myrmidons to hear. Priam goes on to say that despite Peleus’s age, he must at least be comforted to know his son is alive, unlike Priam’s.
The encounter between Achilles and Priam is one of the most famous scenes in Homer’s Iliad. The strangeness that Achilles feels at their encounter thus may represent the strangeness an originally historical figure would feel at passing into myth or legend. In ancient Greek honor culture, the bond between guest and host was sacred, which may explain why Achilles tries to shield Priam—a sort of guest—from his men even though Priam is an enemy.
Themes
Achilles demands to know what Priam wants. Priam replies that he wants to bring Hector’s corpse home, rendering Achilles speechless. Hesitatingly, Priam says that he’s brought a ransom for the body. He begs Achilles to think of his own father and to do what the gods would want. Then he asks how old Achilles’s son is. When Achilles, breaking his silence, says that his son is 15, Priam asks him to imagine what it would be like if his son lay unburied outside the gates of Troy.
Achilles may be speechless when Priam asks for Hector’s body because he is still hoping that desecrating Hector’s corpse will somehow assuage his grief. Achilles came to the Trojan War at age 17; as the war has lasted nine years, Achilles is now 26. If he has a 15-year-old son, he first became a father at age 11. This context reveals how Greek honor culture forces boys into masculine roles like fatherhood at extremely young ages.
Themes
Priam announces: “I do what no man before me has ever done, I kiss the hand of the man who killed my son.” When he kisses Achilles’s hand, Achilles feels furious and barely prevents himself from hitting Priam. When he looks down at his hands, they seem suddenly too large, the way they did the day Patroclus died, and unexpectedly bloody. Then they revert to normal. Achilles pushes Priam away, and both men weep in “parallel, not shared” grief. At this point, the other men have realized who Priam is. Achilles signals Automedon to herd them from the hall.
When Priam says that he does “what no man before [him] has ever done,” he suggests that—by kissing Achilles’s hands—he is humbling his honor before an enemy in an unprecedented way in order to appeal to Achilles’s own honor. Achilles becomes furious at this bit of emotional and cultural manipulation—yet it also causes him to see his hands as too large, perhaps as Patroclus’s hands rather than his own. This transformation hints that Achilles subconsciously believes kind Patroclus would give Hector’s body back to his father Priam. The phrase “parallel, not shared” grief makes clear that Achilles is still weeping for Patroclus, while Priam is weeping for Hector—though the two men’s griefs are closely intertwined, they cannot grieve together.
Themes
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Alone with Priam, Achilles lifts the old man to his feet and then tells him to sit: he can see Hector’s corpse in the morning. Priam tells Achilles not to order him to sit when Achilles’s dogs might at that moment be eating his son’s corpse. Achilles, infuriated, shouts at him to sit and says that he would have been justified in defiling Hector’s corpse because Hector planned to do the same to Patroclus. Priam sits down, trembling.
When Achilles agrees to let Priam see Hector’s corpse, it suggests that Priam’s subtle and unintentional appeal to Patroclus’s example has succeeded in moving Achilles as Prince Lycaon’s more blatant and manipulative appeal did not: Achilles will cease his revenge because that’s what Patroclus would have done. Yet Achilles still defends his desecration of Hector’s corpse by referencing what Hector might have done to Patroclus, which shows that Achilles has still not entirely moved beyond his vengeful grief.
Themes
Achilles takes Priam into his own rooms, where there’s more privacy. Alcimus and Automedon follow. Achilles yells for Briseis to bring wine and orders Alcimus and Automedon away, ordering them to keep the other men from telling the rest of the Greek camp about Priam. After Alcimus and Automedon leave, Briseis enters with wine. Priam notices how beautiful she is and recognizes her face and name but can’t quite place how he knows her.
Achilles’s orders to Alcimus and Automedon make clear that he intends to protect Priam, choosing his honorable duty to a guest over military action against an enemy. Meanwhile, Priam’s inability to recognize Briseis—though she lived in Troy for two years as an adolescent—shows the relative unimportance that men accord to girls and women in ancient Greek and Trojan cultures as represented in the novel.
Themes
