Key Quotes in The Silence of the Girls

These are key quotes from Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, grouped by theme. Each one is the kind of line you can build an essay paragraph around. Learn a handful from each section and you will have strong material for any Paper 2 question.

Quotes on War and Violence

“We’re OFF OFF OFF to plunder, to ## and to rape”

Speaker: The Greek soldiers, singing as they prepare for a raid.

This is deliberately ugly. Barker uses the soldiers’ own words to show how normalised violence has become. They are not ashamed of what they do. They celebrate it. If you are writing about how the novel presents war, this quote does the heavy lifting for you.

“Great Achilles. Brilliant Achilles, shining Achilles, godlike Achilles… How the epithets pile up. We never called him any of those things; we called him ‘the butcher’.”

Speaker: Briseis.

This is one of the most important quotes in the novel. Briseis sets up the gap between how the Greeks see Achilles and how the women see him. The piling up of heroic titles followed by “the butcher” is devastating. Use this for any question about perspective, narrative voice, or how Barker reimagines the Iliad.

“I felt his hand on the back of my neck. He was pushing my face down into the dirty sheet.”

Speaker: Briseis, describing her first night with Achilles.

Barker refuses to look away from what “war prize” actually means. This quote is direct and uncomfortable, and that is the point. It works powerfully in essays about power, subjugation, or the silencing of women’s experiences.

Quotes on Identity and Survival

“I had no name. I was ‘Achilles’ girl’. That’s how people referred to me.”

Speaker: Briseis.

Her identity has been completely absorbed into his. She is no longer a person in her own right but an extension of a man. This quote is excellent for essays about identity, power, or how conflict affects individuals. Notice the flat, matter-of-fact tone. Briseis is not raging about this. She is simply stating what has happened, which makes it even more striking.

“Suppose I’d put poison in his wine? I could have done it any night.”

Speaker: Briseis, reflecting on her captivity with Achilles.

This is a glimpse of the agency Briseis still possesses, even when she seems powerless. She chooses survival over revenge. Use this quote for questions about character complexity or moral choices in a text.

Quotes on Grief and Loss

“He wept the way a woman weeps.”

Speaker: Briseis, describing Achilles’ grief after Patroclus’s death.

This line flips the gender expectations of the entire novel. The greatest warrior in the Greek army grieves in a way that his own culture would consider feminine. Barker is making a point about the absurdity of these categories. For an examiner, this kind of close reading shows real engagement with the text.

“Grief-stricken, he dragged Hector’s body behind his chariot, round and round the walls of Troy.”

Speaker: Briseis, narrating Achilles’ behaviour after killing Hector.

The repetition of “round and round” captures the futility. Achilles cannot stop. His grief has become a loop of violence that brings no resolution. This is strong material for a General Vision question, since it suggests that the novel sees grief as something destructive rather than redemptive.

Quotes on Power

“Agamemnon gazed at me and licked his lips.”

Speaker: Briseis.

Short, visceral, and hard to forget. This line captures the way men in power view the captive women. It is not subtle, and Barker does not want it to be. Use it for any essay about how power dynamics are presented in a comparative text.

“What does it matter what name they put on us? Slave, concubine, wife… We belong to them.”

Speaker: One of the captive women.

This quote cuts through the social distinctions the Greeks make between different categories of women. The point is that none of those labels change the fundamental reality: the women have no freedom. It works well for Theme or Issue essays about power, gender, or social structures.

Quotes on Storytelling and Voice

“What will they make of us, the people of those unimaginably distant times?”

Speaker: Briseis.

This is Barker writing directly about why this novel exists. Briseis is aware that the story of Troy will be told many times, and she suspects her perspective will be lost. The novel itself is Barker’s answer to that question. Use this for any Literary Genre question about narrative perspective or the retelling of classical texts.

Related Pages

• The Silence of the Girls Study Guide
• The Silence of the Girls Summary
• Themes in The Silence of the Girls
• Key Moments in The Silence of the Girls