Essay Sample for Everyone: Silence as Metaphor of Feminist

Silence is not only the absence of sound but also a potent tool used in communication when human expression is needed. Sometimes silence is perceived as an intentional mute from speech. Many times, silence is used to send signals to others because it is sometimes believed that sending signs may be heard easily than talking. When we look at Penelope, a female hero who had been accused of causing the death of her baby brother. Here, the power of silence to the female has been observed as it has helped Rosie to go through her complicated life full of blames (Ehrhardt, 2018).

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The silence made Penelope great because when for instance, she did not love or like somebody or somebody's behavior, she could not tell, as she just kept quiet. This made her greatly respected because she never frustrated anyone (Troster, 2018). Watching and listening was her best choice rather than talking, as she had never spoken since she killed her little brother when she was 4 years old. Another factor that made Penelope great was that she always lived like a nun. It is said that she walked with her heads held up and wore a black gown like a nun, something that made people respect her more. Monde the silence is considered one of the most influential ways of communicating as it shows the level of seriousness to what one says. Penelope tries to show the female members of the community that being silent is the best thing they can do when they feel abandoned and oppressed rather than arguing with people (Kundmueller, 2018).

There is yet another commendable incident of silence found in "Agamemnon" whereby the lady Cassandra remained silent since she arrived with Agamemnon. Her silent revealed her slow and careful approach to things as she was a much-respected hero. Her silence shows she was potentially created to adapt the Homeric styles of life. She adapted to human life because the silence helped her to learn the different things in the community through a lot of listening and watching things as they happen (Suceava, 2017). Finally, when she speaks to end the moment of silence, the whole crowd is captured by her voice because it nearly imitated the one produced by frogs in the water. Her speech was considered necessary for the society because she had remained quiet all time. If at the time she arrived at the society by a cat she had kept talking too much to the people, they would never consider her speech as of any importance. Her silence, and eventually a speech made people to shift their form of narrative from the stage to the palace. Suddenly, Cassandra became a much-respected woman because she is believed as the reason behind the shift of the interconnection between the stage and a play narrative. The silence was also made Cassandra a hero because it breaks the secondary narrative's Homeric rule. The primary narrative of Illiad and Odyssey has always continued to pause while the second one continues to grow because of Cassandra's silence (Kranenburg, 2017).

In Bokassa, silence made the lady so respected because she tried her best to prevent a fight amongst the armies by insisting that silence was the best thing that the army members were supposed to maintain during the disagreement. Lokasta became so respected because despite the very treble moment of fear that her only son could have killed by the enemies surrounding her kingdom, she continued to embrace togetherness amongst her team through not talking while in disagreement. Also, in Phaedra novel, the metaphor of silence is also witnessed helping the hero to gain more respect. She had remained silent until people started thinking that she was shameful (Havelock, 2018). Later, she expressed a hint of her spirit of trouble when she eventually spoke. Phaedra was always silent, but she had a lot of power such that she could save a sick person from death. The main thing that made her so respected is that as much as she helped people, she did not like people who were being killed by their guilt to come pleading for help from her. Also, Phaedra was very apologetic to her mistakes as she always asked for forgiveness anytime she felt that she had done wrong to anybody (Swift, 2018).

In the novel of silence in Briseis, silence is also seen as a source of respect for the lady rose, Byrne. When Briseis' was in love, she did not go around making noise to people about how much she was in love. She explained her silent in Talthybius' facial expression that Homer had emphasized as a romantic expression of the military respect. She has some loving but desperate eyes that show how she loves some Ovid's Bruiseis through silence (Toates, 2017). She is respected because she does not talk so much about how much she loves but shows through her lovely eyes and face.

Sappho is a poem written in Greek language but embraces silent as its vital factor that can bring its meaning clearly understood by the audience. The writer brings rhythm to the poem through observing moments of silence in between the stanza. This kind of rhythm is called the Sapphic stanza (Chess et al., 2018. The silence helps the audience to get time for meditating the words that are previously spoken by the previous stanzas. The author raises voice and lowers it at some point to make the poem more interesting for a better listening from the audience. The poem is eventually liked by everyone causing the author to be considered hero as they feel that her poem was exciting, helpful, and straightforward to understand (Rich, 2017).

Following the above illustrations, one can conclude that silent has been an excellent source of respect and recognition of some female heroes in the society. Some of the female heroes who have gained respect for the community as used the metaphor of silent to win the hearts of their followers (Bartolotta, 2017). Talking so much could have made the heroes look like ordinary human beings because people could start reducing their respect or even fail to respect them at all. Some of the heroes did not want to talk to the human beings because they maybe thought that their unique and scary voices could scare them away hence reducing their friendship (Melena, 2017). Therefore, being silent is considered to be the best way to deal with every situation.

References

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Havelock, C. M. (2018). Mourners on Greek vases: Remarks on the social history of women. In Feminism and art history(pp. 44-61). Routledge.

Kranenburg, M. J. (2017). Behavioral and neural responses to infant and adult tears: The impact of maternal love withdrawal. Emotion, 17(6), 1021.

Kundmueller, M. M. (2018). On the Importance of Penelope. Polity, 50(1), 43-71.

Massanari, A. L., & Chess, S. (2018). Attack of the 50-foot social justice warrior: the discursive construction of SJW memes as the monstrous feminine. Feminist Media Studies, 1-18.

Rich, A. (2017). MOTHERS, POWERLESSNESS, AND INTERGENERATIONAL AGENCY IN EURIPIDES. Future Freedoms: Intergenerational Justice, Democratic Theory, and Ancient Greek Tragedy and Comedy, 87.

Suceava, B. D. (2017). Quadrivium: The Structure of Mathematics as Described in Isidore of Seville's Etymologies. The Mathematical Intelligencer, 39(4), 51-56.

Swift, L. (2018). Thinking with Brothers in Sappho and Beyond. Mouseion, 15(1), 71-87.

Toates, F. (2017). A Hierarchical Model Might Cast Some Light on the Anomaly. Archives of sexual behavior, 46(5), 1203-1205.

Troster, S. (2018). Notes on an exceptional transmission1. Early Music Printing in German-Speaking Lands.

Bartolotta, A. (2017). On deictic motion verbs in Homeric Greek. Ancient Greek Linguistics: New Perspectives, Insights, and Approaches, 277.

Melena, J. L. (2017). 24 joins and quasi-joins of fragments in the Linear B Tablets from Pylos.