The Trojan War is a timeless myth. Its narrative, which oscillates between abduction and seduction, reality and illusion, has endured through the centuries, constantly reinventing itself. Euripides offered a radical version: Helen was never in Troy; only an illusion of herself was carried there (a cloud), while she remained hidden in Egypt. Thus, the Greeks and Trojans would have waged a war without foundation, over a chimera. It is on this interpretation of a war fought blindly that Anne Carson builds NORMA JEANE BAKER OF TROY. In it, Helen becomes Marilyn Monroe—Norma Jeane Baker, by her birth name. Her Menelaus is named Arthur, after Arthur Miller, the writer and Marilyn’s husband. From then on, Helen and Norma Jeane become one and the same: a woman shaped by male gazes, the object of fantasies and violence, trapped in a fate that is not her own.