Linde Fonville

December 11, 2018

English D Block

Incomplete Puzzle

Imagine living your life knowing half of what you know about your friends and family. This

can cause people to make false assumptions, leaving people hurt who shouldn’t be. In Margaret

Atwood’s novel, The Penelopiad, the entire plot becomes complete, but is it too late? By reading

the book, one learns that Penelope fails to speak to her side of the story, resulting in a negative

scenario. Odysseus and the maids receive a punishment that does not warrant their actions. The

maids continuously haunt Odysseus to seek justice for their death, but is he the one responsible?

The maids will never achieve true justice because the actions of the Suitors and Penelope greatly

affect the lives of others, leaving the ones responsible unpunished.

The Suitors manipulative nature leads to the poor behavior of the maids and eventually

spirals into the death of the twelve girls. The maids’ mischievous actions begin because of the

following of Penelope’s orders to seek a relationship with the Suitors. As the maids grew closer

to the greedy men, they began to help “themselves to the maids in the same way they helped

themselves to the sheep and pigs and goats and cows. They probably thought nothing of it”

(Atwood 116). “Several of the girls were unfortunately raped, others were seduced, or were hard

pressed and decided that it was better to give in than to resist” (Atwood 115). The vile behavior

of the Suitors, pressures the maids into affairs, making the girls seem guilty in the eyes of others

in the palace. When Odysseus returns home, it appears as the maids willingly give into the

Suitors’ twisted game. Even though the girls died because of the Suitors’ poor and greedy

actions, the maids haunt Odysseus forever. The maids never achieve justice because they are

punishing the wrong induvial; they should be seeking punishment for the Suitors. The actions of

the Suitors greatly affect the maid’s lives, and ultimately, Odysseus’s. Although the suitors were
forceful and manipulative, the maids originally became involved with the suitors because

Penelope enacted an ill-considered plan.

Penelope’s desperate nature causes her to go to great lengths to hear gossip about herself,

even if it means putting the people she trusts, the maids, in danger. With the failure to tell anyone

about her plan, she holds responsibility for the maid’s death. The initiation of Penelope’s plan

started with ordering the twelve maids to “hang around the Suitors and spy on them, using what-

ever enticing arts they could invent” (Atwood, 115). Penelope orders them to “pretend to be in

love with these men. If they think you have taken their side, they’ll confide in you and we’ll

know their plans” (Atwood, 117). Eventually, Penelope had “instructed them to say rude and

disrespectful things about [her] and Telemachus, and about Odysseus as well, in order to further

the illusion” (Atwood 117). Penelope admits that her “actions were ill-considered and caused

harm. But [she] was running out of time, and becoming desperate, and [she] had to use every

ruse to stratagem at [her] command” (Atwood, 118). Penelope encourages the maids to have

affairs with the Suitors; therefore, upon Odysseus’s return, the maids seemed disloyal. Everyone

in the palace views the maid’s rude and scheming actions with the Suitors as disloyal, unaware

of Penelope’s plan. Penelope failed to vocalize her plan; thus, her ill-considered actions resulted

in the death of twelve maids. The maids will never achieve true justice because Odysseus should

not be the one held accountable for their death.

In the end, Penelope lives with the guilt that she is responsible for the fate

of the maids and the forever torment of Odysseus. She says, “He wants to be with me. He weeps

when he says it. But then some force tears us apart. It’s the maids. […] They make him nervous.

They make him restless. They cause him pain (Atwood 189). Whether Penelope realizes it or

not, she witnesses the person she aspires to be with, continuously run in fear and agony because
of her ill-considered actions. Penelope’s failure to articulate her plan many years ago, caused the

maids to endlessly seek justice from Odysseus. Because he only knows one side of the story and

did not know of Penelope’s plan, Odysseus hangs the maids. The maids will not achieve justice

because they are not seeking justice from the one responsible, Penelope.

Like a puzzle, a story is not complete until the last piece fits. In life, people may make

conclusions based on a single story. Conclusions should not be made until others are aware of

the entire story from many different perspectives. When we fail to express all sides of the story,

harm is caused. Similar to Penelope and the Suitors, the impact of one’s actions can result in a

negative situation. We should not act in response to a single story until we know all the details,

and until the last piece fits.

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. The Penelopiad. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2006.