Women
A Thousand Ships is a work of feminism. It is told from the perspective of the women who played underlooked and often underappreciated roles in the Trojan War and in its immediate aftermath when the Greeks won the war. In each battle that Haynes recount, she pays special attention to the role that women played in each story. Ultimately, it was because of women that wars and battles started and it was because of women that those wars and battles resolves themselves. And it is the Goddess Calliope who is ostensibly the narrator of A Thousand Ships. Throughout the book, she attempts to educate the men around her (including a bard) about what his work should be about and what a war epic is.
Suffering
Because of the Trojan War, which has been fought for over ten years at the start of A Thousand Ships, people in Troy have suffered tremendously. They have lost friends and loved ones, and they have lost confidence in their military and government as a result of the war. Not only that, the city and the possessions therein that they know and love are destroyed fairly consistently by the enemy. War causes suffering to those who fight in it and the citizens which must suffer through it; The Trojan War is no exception.
War
Ultimately, A Thousand Ships tells the story of war and the consequences war has on those who are involved in it. Specifically, the novel tells the story of the Trojan War, which was fought between the Greeks and the Trojans, through the eyes of the women who were involved in it. For everyone involved, war is one of the most destructive and Earth-shattering things in their life. War has killed countless people and drastically altered the lives of many more.
