Chapters read: 1-24
Pages read: up to 615
In
The Iliad by the Greek poet Homer,
Achilles is, undoubtedly, the center of the story. Even with the dozens of
other main characters, the outcome of the novel is ultimately hinged upon the
return of Achilles to the battlefield. Even though the fate of the city was determined,
there always seemed to be two possible outcomes for Achilles. He summarizes
what the sea-goddess told him earlier: “Mother tells me, the immortal goddess
Thetis with her glistening feet, that two fates bear me on to the day of death.
If I hold out here and I lay siege to Troy, my journey home is gone, but my
glory never dies. If I voyage back to the fatherland I love, my pride, my glory
dies” (Homer 265). Returning to the discussion about fate in my last post,
Achilles appears to be in control of his own fate, a unique situation. Homer
probably did this to exemplify Achilles’ superiority among men, and his almost
godlike existence. After all, the future of an entire war lay in his hands, a
privilege normally only possessed by the gods.
More
than just the privileges that Achilles held set him apart from all other men.
Achilles’ goodness and strength of character were incredible. Other men, such
as Agamemnon, were not nearly as honorable as Achilles. Atrides (Agamemnon) was
overly confident and emotional, especially when he was forced to give up his
wife Chryseis and he told his best fighter, Achilles, “Desert, by all means—if the spirit drives you home! I will never
beg you to stay, not on my account… I
hate you most of all the warlords… What if you are a great soldier? That’s just
a gift of god” (Homer 83). Clearly, king Agamemnon’s very understandable, but
very negative human qualities reveal that he is not the perfection of a man
that Achilles is.
Even compared to gods,
Achilles’ character seemed to be less flawed. The gods were often tricksters:
when Hera wanted to support the cause of the Achaeans, she went through with a
plan to “dress in all her glory and go to Ida—perhaps the old desire would
overwhelm the king to lie by her naked body and make immortal love and she
might drift an oblivious, soft warm sleep across his eyes and numb that
seething brain,” after which she could intervene in the Trojan War as she
pleased (Homer 375). This type of deception was not something Achilles engaged
in.
Most importantly about
Achilles, I would say, is his ability to show new sides of himself. Throughout The Iliad, Achilles is a hard warrior
who rarely expresses emotion except for the loss of his beloved friend
Patroclus. However, when Priam, king of Troy came to Achilles’ tent to beg for
his son Hector’s body back and to tell Achilles to think of how important he is
to his father, Achilles got “a deep desire to grieve for his own
father…overpowered by memory both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely for
man-killing Hector, throbbing…as Achilles wept himself, now for his father, now
for Patroclus once again” (Homer 605). This incredible display of emotion from
Achilles’ completes his personality as an embodiment of what ancient Greeks
thought was the perfect human being; he was compassionate, strong, honest, and
level-headed. According to the philosophy of Plato, Achilles could be seen as a Platonic ideal of a human.
Here is the wikipedia article about platonic idealism.
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