Wind

The wind – or lack thereof – plays an important thematic role within House of Names, most notably because it symbolizes the capacity for change or progression. During scenes in which the wind is noted to be gone (“‘why is there no wind?’” Clytemnestra asks, in Chapter 3 [147]), characters are made stagnant. For example, at the start of the novel, the Achaian troops are barred from travelling to Troy due to a lack of wind, and it is this very lack that provokes Agamemnon to sacrifice his daughter at the Altar. Similarly, such a deficit is observed in Chapters 3 and 4 when characters reflect on how Mycenae has experienced a bout of wind-lessness during the time of Clytemnestra’s rule. Such that a lack of wind – which is an unnatural phenomenon – might be said to reflect the very unnatural nature of a character’s actions. Conversely, when the wind is...