I told you I would finish the book. Helen of Troy was a really great achievement when it comes to a monthly book. I don’t think I could have finished it without those long flights at the beginning, but it was amazing. Once we got into the heat of the Trojan War, the book flew by!
Helen found love with Paris. That love literally destroyed an entire city. Death after death…Troy was left burning when the Greeks were finished. Is that powerful, or is that sad?
I have some thoughts.
The Role of Women
So, I don’t like getting political or speaking my mind when it comes to controversial issues. However, thank goodness that the world has progressed the way that it has. Women were left behind. They were only “allowed” to fight because they were equivalent with young boys and old men. The attractive women were saved from the destruction of Troy only to become slaves to the Greeks.
Clytemnestra stood up to her husband for abandoning her, cheating on her repeatedly, oh, and SACRIFICING THEIR DAUGHTER, and she was berated for it. What?!
There was one section toward the end of the novel where the Greeks are auctioning off the remaining eligible women. There was so much time spent of the Greeks calling Helen a whore because she found love with another man. The entire reason she left Sparta, beyond finding love, was because she found her husband in relations with another woman. The double standard here killed me. Why can’t everyone be faithful?
Pride
Isn’t it supposed to be a running theme in these types of stories that hubris is the downfall of people. Shouldn’t pride have gotten in the Greeks’ way? How is it that, at the end of the day, their pride only helped them.
The Flippin’ Horse!
Come on. Who falls for that?! “They constructed this for you and left it behind.” Really? You really think that they abandoned their fight AND left you a present. They already infiltrated your “camp” once! Also, where were the rest of the Greeks hiding that their ships were gone and no one noticed them around the city?
All in, I did love Helen of Troy. A friend of mine borrows a lot of my books, and I told her that it is not one I would give to her. If you’re going to read a book like this (historical fiction/memoir-type), you really need to have a passion for the subject material. This was like a written Hercules.
