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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Trojan Women, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Cost of War
Fate, Fortune, and the Gods
Duty, Obligation, and Integrity
Men and Women
Summary
Analysis
The Chorus sings a song about a previous attack on Troy. The demigod Heracles had made a deal to kill a sea monster that was attacking Troy, if the city’s King would trade him some horses. He killed the sea monster, but the king, Laomedon, went back on his word. Angry, Heracles raided the city. The Chorus imagines how Laomedon’s daughter, who was going to be sacrificed to the sea monster before Heracles killed it, must have felt as her city burned, and the women in it were killed.
The horrors the women of Troy are enduring in the play’s present unfortunately have a historical precedent. In the past, as in the present, the women and the buildings of the city itself were forced to pay the price for the failures of its armies and its men.
Themes
The Chorus also sings of the goddess of the Dawn, Eos, and her Trojan lover, Tithonus. The remark that “the gods loved Troy once. Now they have forgotten.”
As the Chorus has lamented before, it seems that all the gods, even ones like Poseidon, who had historically supported Troy, have abandoned them.
Themes
