Opening Paragraph
Oddly enough, the entire first chapter of the novel is related to the meat of the narrative only tangentially. Essentially, yes, but technically speaking it could easily be excised from the book in its entirety and nothing else would need to be altered. That said, an argument can easily be forwarded that the greatest moments of writing in the book—as in the greatest use of language and literary tools—are packed into this section which begins this memorably intense imagery in the opening paragraph:
“Inside the horse’s gut: heat, darkness, sweat, fear. They’re crammed in, packed as tight as olives in a jar. He hates this contact with other bodies. Always has. Even clean, sweet-smelling human flesh makes him want to puke—and these men stink. It might be better if they kept still, but they don’t. Each man shifts from side to side, trying to ease his shoulders into a little more space, all intertwined and wriggling like worms in a horse’s shite.”
Helen of Tease
Helen of Troy is, without question, the most famous woman of Troy. In fact, she’s one of the most famous women in history. Or in literature, whichever one the Trojan War actually belongs to. But the Helen presented here is seen through the perspective of a slightly younger women who grew up being referred to as “Helen’s little friend.” And so the portrayal is somewhat more intimate:
“Helen was well aware of the effect she was having. I remember one evening in particular when—tongue in cheek, as usual—she’d been complimenting the Trojans on how strictly they chaperoned unmarried girls. Helen was from Argos where things were done quite differently. `Do you know,’ she said, `when I was a fully grown girl, ripe for marriage, I was still stripping to the waist and racing my brothers along the beach? I mean—' She gazed innocently around the table. `Can you imagine ?’ Oh, they could, they could, they definitely could.”
The Games
Boxing and chariot racing are the only games left to play as excitement builds to a climax almost too intense to bear. The imagery used to describe the arrival of the competitors is vivid and visceral. It is almost like a portrait coming to life::
“The competitors were already gathering. The whole scene was bathed in lemony-yellow light that became richer in tone, less acidic, as the sun rose higher. The chariots glittered; the horses’ backs gleamed. The grooms would have been up well before dawn making sure everything was as perfect as it could be. At the end of the race, ash-grey men driving dirty horses would emerge from the clouds of dust, but they set off each of them looking like Phoebus Apollo driving the chariot of the sun. Among the crowd at the starting line, I spotted Pyrrhus’s red hair and Diomedes’s glossy black curls.”
What Is Hecuba to Her?
Enslavement to the victorious Greeks is not exactly a walk in the park for the women of the defeated Trojans. Some, of course, can handle it better than others. For instance, the narrator’s marriage to a relatively decent man has certain advantages. Hecuba has not been quite so lucky:
“I could easily imagine Hecuba sitting in a warm room doing light embroidery and not, as so many older women were forced to do, scrubbing stone floors while being shouted at because they weren’t working fast enough…All nonsense, these imaginings…At first sight, she was a bag of bones, huddled under a dirty blanket. The one arm lying outside the cover was so wrinkled and brown-spotted it looked more like the pelt of an animal than human skin. She stirred when she heard our voices and started trying to sit up, blinking in the sudden light. I was horrified to see how frail she’d become; even in the short time since her arrival in the camp, she seemed to have shrunk.”
