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Chapter 42
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
Briseis goes with Achilles, Alcimus, and Automedon to the stable yard. The men lift Hector’s corpse, carry it to the laundry hut, and place it on the slab. Achilles, looking at Hector’s physically pristine though dirty corpse, says: “See how the gods defy me?” Briseis, astonished by Achilles’s arrogance, almost repeats the question back to him with pointed emphasis—but manages to keep quiet.
Once again, Achilles casts himself as the hero in a classic narrative—man vs. god—by asking rhetorically, “See how the gods defy me?” Briseis, as an enslaved woman, is never allowed the classic hero’s role—and so sees Achilles’s mythic posturing as pure egotism. Meanwhile, on a symbolic level, Hector’s pristine corpse represents how Achilles’s revenge against Hector has been impotent: none of the desecrations that Achilles has heaped on the corpse have “worked” in that none have lessened Achilles’s grief for Patroclus.
Themes
Achilles orders Alcimus and Automedon to leave. The two men, though shocked, obey. Briseis suggests that she could get other women to help her prepare Hector’s corpse, but Achilles refuses, saying he doesn’t want gossip to spread through the camp. Briseis intuits that Achilles won’t just spectate, so she gives him his own bucket of water and cloth, and the two of them begin washing Hector’s corpse.
This scene marks a reversal of the characters’ usual roles: to protect Priam from gossip, Achilles takes on the enslaved woman’s role of cleaning corpses—and not just any corpse, but the corpse of the enemy on whom he has been trying to take endless revenge. This unexpected reversal hints that Achilles’s behavior may continue to be unusual throughout the rest of the scene.
Themes
When Briseis washes the face of Hector’s corpse, she thinks that he would have been the next king of Troy and almost starts crying. Abruptly, Achilles says he doesn’t have to let Priam leave and asks rhetorically how much the Trojans would give to have Priam returned. When Briseis protests that Priam has already brought an enormous ransom for Hector’s corpse, Achilles says she isn’t grasping his point: he could ask for Helen. Briseis, almost dizzy, realizes that trading Priam for Helen could end the war. Then she tells Achilles that he’s not going to do it. Achilles replies that Priam is a guest. When Briseis points out that Achilles didn’t invite him, Achilles retorts that he “accepted” him.
Achilles decides to return Hector’s corpse to Priam out of some combination of honor and of Patroclus’s kind example. Yet the same sense of honor prevents him from taking Priam hostage and ending the war, which has already led to the deaths of many, many young men. This ironic fact underscores that the Greeks’ masculine honor culture often exposes its young men to avoidable deadly violence. The real surprise of the scene is not that Achilles chooses honor over pragmatism but that he is sharing his thoughts with Briseis at all, suggesting that sharing a task with her has led him to glimpse her humanity, at least a little, despite her low cultural status as a woman and an enslaved person.
Themes
Achilles and Briseis finish preparing Hector’s corpse in silence. Once the body is ready, Alcimus and Automedon try to help Achilles carry it out, but Achilles insists on carrying it to Priam’s cart himself. Achilles tells Automedon that he “hope[s] Patroclus understands.” Briseis thinks to herself that Patroclus would never have wanted Achilles to defile Hector’s corpse in the first place. Afterward, Achilles insists that they all go have a drink—Briseis included.
The novel has hinted that Achilles agreed to return Hector’s corpse in part because Patroclus would have wanted him to. Yet Achilles still muses aloud that he “hope[s] Patroclus understands” his decision not to keep taking infinite revenge. This strange musing hints that Achilles desecrated Hector’s corpse in part to atone to Patroclus for getting Patroclus killed—an irrational and fruitless behavior showing the self-destructive and self-loathing nature of Achilles’s grief.
Themes
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When Achilles, Alcimus, Automedon, and Briseis have had their wine, Achilles wishes the other two men goodnight. They don’t want to leave Achilles alone in his quarters with Priam, but Achilles points out that Priam came without even a knife. Automedon asks about “the girl,” and Achilles says she’s staying. Both Automedon and Alcimus give her looks as they leave. When they’re gone, Achilles, mildly entertained, tells Briseis that they think she’s in cahoots with Priam, plotting his murder. Achilles seems strangely less dour now. He starts taking his clothes off, so Briseis does too, though she wants to go talk to Priam. After Achilles rapes her, he throws his arm around her.
Achilles’s mood improves and he regains the ability to get an erection after he agrees to return Hector’s corpse and cleans the body respectfully. This change highlights that Achilles’s vengeful desecrations of Hector’s corpse, far from assuaging his grief at Patroclus’s death, were actually psychologically harming him further. Thus, the return of Hector’s corpse may foreshadow an improvement in his grief. Meanwhile, though Achilles is treating Briseis somewhat more like a person, he still casually uses her as a sexual slave, showing that his consideration toward his enemy Priam in no way constitutes a rethinking of his overall militaristic, misogynistic, slave-owning worldview.
Themes
