Black Ships Before Troy

The black sails of the novel’s title are a recurring motif, symbolizing mourning and foreshadowing the countless deaths of the war. The novel opens with the black ships of the Greeks sailing towards Troy, bringing countless warriors, armies, war, and ultimately, death. The ominous color heralds the eventual destruction of Troy.

The black ships are an omnipresent harbinger of death. Just as the Greeks cannot penetrate the walls of Troy, so the Trojans fail to burn down the black ships, despite there often being “men were among them with firebrands to burn the black ships on the day of the battle rage of Hector” (112).

The black ships are ultimately correct in their foreshadowing of Trojan ruin; the city is burned to the ground, its men and children slaughtered, and its women enslaved. After Troy is sacked, the ships finally sail off, this time bearing back some of the dead that they originally portended. Though the Greeks sail under the black banners and arrive in the black ships themselves, they are no less immune to the death and tragedy that the sails foreshadow. Even the most eagerly anticipated Greek warrior is now just black ship cargo: “they carried dead

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