Essays on Homer's Iliad
Essay Six
Hector and Achilles
This
essay, which has been prepared by Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College,
Nanaimo, BC, Canada, is in the public domain and may be used by anyone, in whole
or in part, without charge and without permission, provided the source is
acknowledged; released August 2005.
For
the Table of Contents of the series of essays and an Introductory
Comment outlining the purpose of the series, please use the following link: Essays
on Homer's Iliad.
References
to the text of the Iliad are to the online translation available here.
The references in square brackets are to the Greek text.
For
comments and questions please contact Ian
Johnston
A
Comment on the Iliad as a Tragedy
Commentary
on the Iliad often seems to involve some interesting questions about the
nature of the two principal human characters, Achilles and Hector, in
particular, about which of the two is the hero of the poem and whether either of
them qualifies as a tragic hero. The answer to the first of these
questions seems clear enough: Achilles is obviously the hero, as the invocation
to the poem announces (pace all those, like Thomas Cahill, who wish to
raise doubts about the matter). The second question is more problematic:
Are Hector and Achilles tragic heroes? Or does one of them fit the bill
and other not?
Such
arguments about the tragic hero are almost inevitably circular: one sets out a
list of criteria which the tragic hero must meet, then applies them to Achilles
and Hector, and so reaches a conclusion determined by one's initial assumptions.
The persuasiveness of the case rests on the a priori (and perhaps
contested) assumptions with which one begins, a dubious logical procedure.
So I do not propose to follow that line of argument here. Instead I wish
to focus on the conduct of Hector and Achilles in the poem (without applying any
particular label to their characters in advance), especially in comparison with
the normal behaviour of the other warriors, in order to see if there is anything
distinctly different about what happens to them. If there is, we might
want to explore the extent to which that might indicate similarities with other
later heroes who in large part define what we mean by a tragic hero, especially
with reference to Greek drama (e.g., Oedipus).
In other
words, I intend here to measure Achilles and Hector against the heroic code, as
that is established in the poem by the warrior leaders, and see what that line
of enquiry produces. Such a comparison is significant, because (to
telegraph where I am going) each of them experiences a relationship with this
shared belief which is, in some important ways, different from that of the other
warriors. Achilles moves beyond the traditional code into uncharted
territory, where he is terribly isolated, a journey which gives him a new and
potentially shattering perspective on what they all believe. This
development is unique to him in the poem and (I shall argue) is close enough to
what tragic heroes go through to enable us to say that he enters the realm of
"tragic experience." Whether that qualifies him to be a tragic
hero I shall leave to others to judge. Hector's career is very different.
He is the only warrior leader (apart from Achilles) who momentarily loses faith
in the heroic code, and that loss is devastating, not because it brings him any
new insight, but rather because it makes him lose control of himself in an
absurd panic. He regains his composure before his death and dies an
orthodox warrior hero. But (I shall argue) we cannot say of him, as we can
of Achilles, that he has pushed experience into some as yet unexplored realm.
The
Warrior Ethic Revisited
An
earlier essay in this series (Essay 4) examines the heroic code of the Iliadic
warriors, so I shall not go into any detail here. However, before looking
at Hector and Achilles we need to remember the major features of the ethic that
sustains these warriors as a normative guide to their conduct. The warrior
ethic and the religious and social beliefs fundamental to it establish for the
Iliadic leader a coherent vision of experience which we can briefly sum up as
follows: in a fatalistic universe of constant irrational natural and cosmic
strife, where the only certainty man has is the knowledge of his own inevitable
death, the final end to his personal existence, the individual has the freedom
to choose his response; the finest men, in their freedom, decide to assert their
individuality by defining themselves as worthy human beings in battle, risking
death in a continuous series of personal encounters. The immediate rewards
for the warrior are social esteem and moments of glory in this life and perhaps
an enduring fame after death. Each leader organizes his life in the
service of this vision. What contributes to it has value and what does not
serve its needs has no place. The warrior code is thus radically
pessimistic in the sense not only that the pursuit of personal happiness does
not exist as a reasonable long-term option, the choices life offers being
inherently unsatisfactory in some important ways, but also that the vision does
not provide any acceptable alternative to a chosen life of harsh dangers and
either an early death or an insignificant old age. The warrior lives with
a cruel destiny which he cannot change, but, in spite of that, he constantly
strives with all his resources to stand up and declare himself. Only in
such a brave reaction does his humanity acquire any significance.
This
harsh creed serves a number of important functions, for it gives the warrior a
sense of his identity in relation to those around him and establishes shared
guidelines for how to act in a world which does not provide any divinely
sanctioned moral truths. As we have seen, the heroic code makes stern
demands but also establishes certain limits. One does not have to push
one's heroic self-assertion to the extreme limit: one can refuse to fight
against the gods. It also provides well-understood unwritten rules for
mutual dealings among the leaders, including any disputes. Thus the heroic
code provides a reassuring sense to each warrior of who he is and how he must
behave. The traditions of his family, his past experiences, his position
in the social hierarchy, and, above all, the expectations of the group, provide
not only a challenging and reassuring sense of how the warrior should act but
also a guarantee that he will not be abandoned in death. His comrades will
fight for his corpse and celebrate his memory.
Setting
aside Hector and Achilles for the moment, we observe that all the major warriors
in this poem subscribe to this creed uncritically; in other words, they do not
challenge its authority, and they always act in accordance with its demands.
As we have seen in an earlier essay, they do not have to think like us, puzzling
about what is appropriate from moment to moment. Their shared faith in the
heroic code gives them immediate and spontaneous instructions, and the group is
always around them to observe, encourage, and, if necessary, criticize.
Homer structures the poem so that, when we have to follow the major events in
the careers of Hector and Achilles, we already know in detail the standard by
which their warrior group operates. One of the major functions in the poem
of Diomedes and Sarpedon, for example, who get so much attention before Achilles
returns, is to consolidate our understanding of the heroic code. These
warriors, like their peers, never stray beyond the group or the group's faith in
its values. Sarpedon's final battle and dying speech (in Book 16) confirm
his adherence to the shared code. He lives and dies a brave warrior,
always among his comrades and bolstered by the ethos for which he is such an
eloquent spokesman. In spite of the fact that he can imagine a better life
if the conditions were different, he never, not even in dying, moves outside the
group, physically or spiritually.
This is
obviously a hard faith, and many readers, no doubt, are tempted to see these
heroes as victims of a perverted system of belief. But, as I have argued
earlier, their conduct arises compellingly out of what they believe about the
world and is an expression of their freedom to choose how they will confront a
grimly beautiful and destructive fate. They could opt out of the war, but
for them mere survival at home is less important than a significant, worthy life
on the battlefield, especially since they will all die sooner or later anyway.
So none of them raises any significant doubts about or loses faith in their
shared creed. This notion of their freedom to choose is important, because
it is not the case that these men are mere slaves to circumstances, unwilling
robots pushed to destruction by blind impulses, as, for example, Julian Jaynes
suggests, "The Trojan War was directed by hallucinations. And the
soldiers who were so directed were not at all like us. They were noble
automatons who knew not what they did" (75). Such a view is no more
applicable to these warriors than it is to modern soldiers or, for that matter,
professional athletes in strenuous, often dangerous, team sports, whose actions
stem from a similar belief. Their quality as soldiers or athletes arises
from how they choose to conduct themselves in circumstances they must confront
(if they wish to be considered worthy) but cannot change.
Hector
In the
light of the above summary remarks, we can see that for almost all the poem
Hector is an orthodox warrior leader. Of course, he possesses a special
pre-eminence as the unquestioned leader of the Trojans, and they obey his orders
without raising any doubts (at least until Polydamas offers alternative
suggestions about their tactics). Before Achilles' return to the war,
Hector is one of the most successful followers of the heroic code. As we
have seen in an earlier essay, even when his own behaviour brings out very
clearly some of the more complex ironies of the code, as in the scene with
Andromache and Astyanax, for example, he remains an uncritical servant of his
culture's vision of life. His attitude to the gods and their treatment of
him reveal no significant differences between Hector and the other warriors,
except in the degree of his success. His conduct on the battlefield,
including his many triumphs and his setbacks, his being wounded, and his
recovering with the help of Apollo presents nothing we are not already familiar
with from the experiences of other warriors.
But the
scene of Hector's final battle introduces something very different, an act which
gives him a unique importance in the poem. For in that encounter with
Achilles, we witness a remarkable departure from normality. Just before
the fight, Hector, for the very first time, becomes totally isolated on the
battlefield, physically displaced from his comrades, who are all dead or inside
the walls. He has enjoyed a dazzling success and a cruel reversal in
leading the Trojans against the Achaean ships. Now he stands alone outside
the walls of the city. His parents have made their most eloquent pleas for
his return. Hector must decide whether to face Achilles or retreat within
the walls, declining battle. His moment of supreme crisis has come.
Hector's first response to this unusual situation is, as we have seen, to
reaffirm the code by which he has lived. If he goes back into the city
people will laugh at him, and he will suffer the worst experience he can
imagine, public shame for his conduct in battle. By comparison with that
certain result, he prefers his chances against Achilles.
But then
an extraordinary moment occurs. In his physical isolation, Hector suddenly
changes his mind and starts examining ways to avoid the conflict. He
briefly considers betraying everything he has lived for, by throwing himself on
the mercy of Achilles, offering enormous gifts—half
the wealth of the city and Helen as well. Hector instinctively realizes
how abnormal such an action would be, for he acknowledges that he would have to
take an oath to divide Troy's riches without deceit, the first suggestion of the
potential for dishonest conduct in a noble warrior. That possibility he
then rejects as impractical and dishonourable. Achilles may spurn his
offer and kill him anyway, thus redoubling his shame. And so he returns
once more to the simple clarity of the warrior code: "No,
it's better to clash in battle right away./ We'll see which one wins victory
from Zeus" (22.163). Hector's hesitation here—his summoning up, even momentarily, dishonourable
options—indicates that his faith has started to waver. It has become
uncharacteristically difficult for him to meet the present situation with the
customary heroic response (1).
Hector's behaviour at the first appearance of Achilles suggests, then,
that the strain of adhering to the community ethic has become so strong that
Hector, in his physical isolation from his fellow soldiers, has great trouble
maintaining it. He does not want to act in the way which his vision of
life tells him he should. Nothing in the warrior code will justify the
options he would prefer to attempt. And so Hector does the
unthinkable—he runs away. His instinctive decision to take flight
indicates that he has momentarily lost the will to continue the heroic role,
that the warrior's faith no longer answers to or can contain his most urgent
emotional demands. So he breaks down. Because he is at a total loss,
left with no comrades to support him and nothing to tell him what to do other
than a sudden onrush of fear, he panics and surrenders himself to the most human
of impulses, a desperate attempt to escape certain death. Instantly the
significance of his life collapses, and his proud, individualistic stance
crumbles into a nightmare:
Like a
dream in which a man cannot catch someone
who's running off and the other can't escape,
just as the first man can't catch up—that's how
Achilles, for all his speed, could not reach Hector,
while Hector was unable to evade Achilles. (22.247) [22.199]
The
extended description of Hector's running away in repetitive circles around Troy
illustrates the absurdity of life from which the heroic assertion of individual
worth has disappeared. The heroic code does not permit Hector to enter
Troy and evade battle, while his personal feelings do not permit him to stand
and fight. The once proud warrior has consequently become totally
disoriented, like a terrified rabbit, because the faith that has sustained him
him is inadequate to his situation, and he does not know what to do, or rather
he cannot endure doing what his previous way of life tells him he must do.
In the absence of such a continuing faith in the heroic code, how else can a man
cope with the terrible fear of death but keep running until the destroyer
catches him? But Hector has nowhere to run to. Caught in an acute
dilemma from which there is no way out he instinctively changes his heroic path,
up to this point in his life always a direct linear course to and from battle,
into an absurd, never-ending circular chase in no man's land. The passage
offers no suggestions that Hector is aware why he is behaving in this manner.
He does not even consciously decide to run. Once his faith in the warrior
code disintegrates, he loses control of himself.
Significantly
Hector regains his heroic composure as soon as he thinks he has found a comrade
to stand with him on the battlefield. With Deiphobus apparently at his
side, Hector instantly recovers the warrior code which had failed him when he
was alone, and he can now move to face Achilles in the conventionally manner.
Having accepted the strong likelihood of his death he seeks to bargain with
Achilles to make sure he receives the traditional funeral honours. The
latter's fierce, uncompromising refusal indicates that he is now following a
very different vision from Hector's customary faith. This Hector does not
see. Back inside the only system of belief he has every experienced, he
seeks to hang onto the certainties it offers. Even when he recognizes that
Athena has tricked him and faces the sure knowledge of his own imminent death,
Hector shows us that he will die as he has lived, among the finest examples of
the warrior code:
"This is it, then.
The gods are summoning me to my death.
I thought warrior Deïphobus was close by.
But he's inside the walls, and Athena
has deceived me. Now evil death is here,
right beside me, not somewhere far away.
There's no escape. For a long time now,
this must have been what Zeus desired,
and Zeus' son, the god who shoots from far,
and all those who willingly gave me help
in earlier days. So now I meet my fate.
Even so, let me not die ingloriously
without a fight, but in some great action
which those men yet to come will hear about." (22.3730) [22.297]
Hector
comes close here to recognizing something profound about human experience, the
complex ironic mystery at the heart of life. But he turns away from that
insight, unwilling or unable to push into the unknown territory he would
encounter if he confronted the cruel irrationality of fate head on. This
speech does not reveal any extraordinary insight into human life, a more intense
and deeper understanding than the heroic code provides every brave warrior.
By recalling himself to the traditional notion of his earlier faith, Hector is,
in a sense, protecting himself. He has not re-embraced that creed because
he has freely chosen to do so, in the full light of its ironic consequences
returning to the orthodox fold with the fresh and vital awareness of a temporary
apostate. He is grabbing hold of it, as if that were the only way to
confer some meaning on his final moments. His dying request to Achilles
for proper treatment of his corpse is thus an apparently vain last invocation of
the customary rituals, a final plea for the traditional honours which make his
suffering and death meaningful. And when Achilles' refusal to honour
Hector's dying words reveals again just how far the victor has moved away from
normal conduct, how impervious he now is to the common expectations of the
group, Hector can only make the desperately weak dying reply that the gods may
punish Achilles if he does not behave properly.
Hector's
last combat thus present a cruelly ironic portrait. His death is not, by
his own standards, absurd, as it might have been if Achilles had speared him in
the back while he was running away. The assertion of his heroic dignity,
however, is undercut by our sense that in his desperation he is using the
tradition as, so to speak, an illusion. Hector must know before he dies
that his life will count for something, and the only system of values he can
reach for is the traditional one which has just failed him. True, Hector
has regained his courageous composure, but the experience of collapse has not
brought him to a significantly new awareness of his condition. Hence,
Hector's death does not support the contention that he is significantly
transformed before he dies, that he somehow gains an insight into the absolute
verities of human existence, that before his death "he sees the whole truth
in the face of it, the flaw which false hope had made in his courage is cured,
and he meets Achilles like an equal" (Whitman 212), or that "At this
moment, and only at this moment, Hector is equal to Achilles, and superior to
all Iliadic characters, in the depth and intensity of his consciousness of life
as limited and valorized by the fact of death" (Mueller, Iliad 64),
or that at this moment he is "endowed with a brief moment of
clairvoyance" (Michalopoulos 95). To equate Hector and Achilles here or to
compare Hector with Oedipus is to invest Hector's death speeches with a
significance they will not support. For there is no sense here that
Achilles and Hector meet as equals. Quite the contrary. Hector
remains an admirable human warrior-leader, but Achilles we know is on a
different plane altogether. The spiritual difference between the two is as
marked as the difference between the normal armour of Achilles which Hector is
wearing and the divinely crafted armour of his opponent.
Achilles'
immense physical, emotional, and spiritual superiority over Hector in this
encounter is perhaps one reason why so many readers find Hector a far more
sympathetic figure than Achilles. The preference rests not only on our
natural liking for the leader of the most famous underdogs in our best known
war, who will soon lose everything to the victors, or on our natural admiration
for the chief of those fighting in defense of their homes and families, or even
on the way in which our Christian traditions can more easily ascribe to Hector
orthodox virtues. We also like Hector because we can readily understand
what has happened to him. In comparison with Achilles' invincible
confidence, brutal success, and terrifying spiritual isolation, Hector's
momentary loss of faith and the emotional uncertainties of his final battle
strike us as particularly human, actions we ourselves might well demonstrate in
the fatal ironies of the killing zone.
Achilles
as a Traditional Warrior Leader
The Iliad
is, of course, centrally the story of Achilles, who is, beyond all doubt, the
hero of the poem, as the opening invocation announces, not only because he is
the mightiest of the warriors, whose presence or absence has a decisive outcome
on the battles, but also because in his experience of the war he pushes his
understanding of human life beyond the customary limits and explores the extreme
consequences of that vision with an integrity and intensity that no one else in
the poem even understands, let alone matches. In following the career of
Achilles in the Iliad, therefore, the reader has to confront issues which
no other warrior leader raises.
In
discussing the story of Achilles, one might usefully begin by outlining the
general stages through which he passes on the route to the final calm acceptance
of his own death. First, the poem depicts him as a famous and successful
but recognizably normal heroic leader. That is how he has been up to the
quarrel, and his peers all acknowledge his high status (especially Nestor in
Book 1). After the quarrel with Agamemnon, he enters a period of unusual
inactivity, in which for several books he disappears from the action. When
he re-enters the story in Book 9 to entertain the ambassadors from Agamemnon, it
is evident from the nature of his refusal that some important changes have been
taking place. In his response to the death of Patroclus, Achilles
reveals yet another development, and this change leads directly to his decision
to return to the war and to his subsequent aristeia. Finally, after
the killing of Hector, in the most extraordinary scene of the poem, a
transformed Achilles meets Priam to arrange the surrender of Hector's corpse.
By the end of the narrative, the warrior leader of the opening has become so
changed that he is quite unlike any of his former comrades. He has been
through an amazingly intense isolation, and his suffering and emotional
dislocation have given him quite a different perspective on the traditional
heroic code by which he has lived his life until a few days before.
From
what we learn about the life of Achilles before the quarrel with Agamemnon and
in the first moments of that argument, Achilles appears to be quite similar to
the other leaders, except for his outstanding speed, strength, and battlefield
success. There is no suggestion that his life has not been rooted in the
ethic they all subscribe to. In Book 1, the other leaders acknowledge his
military prowess, a gift from the gods, but they accord him no unique honours in
the peer group other than that, and Nestor, the voice of traditional authority,
makes clear the relationship between Agamemnon's and Achilles' relative social
positions. His response to the expropriation of Briseis is what we would
expect from any other warrior leader, intense anger over a loss of status which
the removal of the girl represents. And his decision to withdraw his and
his men's services from the battle represents a logical, if extreme, response to
Agamemnon's insult. The anger he unleashes against the Achaeans,
prophesying disaster for the army, and his vow not to help arise out of his
feelings that, according to the warrior code, he has been shamed, a very
passionate outburst, to be sure, but by no means a conscious decision to abandon
that framework of belief. In fact, by hoping that his withdrawal will
shame Agamemnon in front of everyone else, Achilles is obviously relying on the
traditional code to bring him satisfaction. The language of his oath,
however, contains ironic suggestions that Achilles at this point is not aware of
the full significance of what this moment will bring:
"I'll
tell you, swear a great oath on this point,
by this sceptre, which will never sprout
leaves
and shoots again, since first ripped away
from its mountain stump, nor bloom any more,
now that bronze has sliced off leaf and bark.
This sceptre Achaea's sons take in hand
whenever they do justice in Zeus' name.
An oath on this has power. On this I swear—
the time will come when Achaea's sons
all miss Achilles, a time when, in distress,
you'll lack my help, a time when Hector,
that man killer, destroys many warriors.
Then
grief will tear your hearts apart,
because you shamed Achaea's finest man." (1.256) [1.233]
His
words here offer us a complex insight into the future course of his life.
He takes his oath on the most important emblem of traditional respect among his
peers, the object symbolizing "justice in Zeus' name." In
accordance with the freedom that tradition grants each warrior, Achilles
declares his choice and confirms it by reminding the assembly of the ancient
authority and the value system which has made him "Achaea's finest
man." Then he hurls the staff on the ground. Obviously, in his
anger, he means to indicate to his fellow warrior leaders as dramatically as
possible his most passionate feelings about Agamemnon's insult. But by
casting aside the symbol of their common religious and political faith, Achilles
unwittingly reveals the deeper consequences of his action: he is rejecting the
group and therefore the communal warrior code which gives him the only system of
meaning he understands and which has made him what he is. After all,
Agamemnon's insult only carries weight within the context of the orthodox
warrior culture, and Achilles' extreme reaction to the king's arrogance
illustrates just how thoroughly he is a product of that group belief. His
immediate motive may be passionate anger and a desire to teach the Achaeans just
how important and valuable he is, but the dramatic gesture indicates the start
of an emotional and spiritual displacement from the group.
The
poetic imagery of Achilles' oath conveys also the hidden complexity of the
moment. The wood staff will never flourish again, for it has been cut away
from its nourishment, its tree and its environment, and is now dead.
Achilles' emphasis on that image in the course of cutting himself away from the
organism which has nourished him raises the question: How is he to flourish now
that he has apparently thrown away the only system of values he has ever known?
And the implied comparison with the staff indicates an answer: dry, dead wood
flourishes again, if at all, only in fire, for only in the glorious blaze which
destroys what it feeds on can the lopped-off limb regain vital heat and become,
in the process of self-destruction, a beautiful living thing. Here again,
Achilles is announcing no carefully thought-out plan. His oath and his
rejection of the staff are spontaneous responses to his deepest irrational
feelings, in his view quite appropriate to the insult he has just received.
But the dramatic irony latent in the imagery—the gap
between our complete understanding of what the moment represents and Achilles'
only very partial grasp of its significance—alerts us to the full implications
not only of the action but also of Achilles' ignorance. This dramatic
irony receives further emphasis a few lines later, when Achilles asks his mother
to secure Zeus' favour in giving help to the Trojans, so that events will shame
Agamemnon. Thetis responds with an lament for the untimely death of her
son. At this moment, Achilles' death is the furthest thing from his
mind—he wants revenge. But Thetis and the reader see the more profound
significance of the events which launch Achilles' story in the Iliad.
It's important to stress (yet again) that Achilles' anger here comes from
an understandable reaction. The feelings are intense, but they originate
in the natural response of a proud, successful warrior-prince, who up to this
point has always conducted himself in accordance with the demands of his
society. The anger is not abnormal (except perhaps in degree). Nor
is Achilles, as some critics have suggested, already displaced from his group
before the fight with Agamemnon or in some way very different from them, at
least concerning his sense of himself and of the warrior group (2).
To insist that Achilles is in some way very different in his nature is to remove
from his story its human significance, which depends for its power on his
transformation from an important warrior leader among his peers into a solitary
avenger. For what makes Achilles extraordinary is not his initial
behaviour or his character before the quarrel, but rather the changes that take
place when he withdraws from the fighting and then refuses to come back.
The Embassy to Achilles
The Achaean ambassadors to Achilles (in Book 9) base their appeal to him,
just as Agamemnon does, on their understanding of what is appropriate behaviour
for a warrior leader. They assume that Achilles is still the man they have
always known and will thus respond favourably to a restoration of or increase in
his status with material possessions far in excess of what he has lost and a
fulsome public apology from Agamemnon. And they are right to make this
assumption because, according to the warrior code, any normal leader would and
should accept such an extraordinary offer. Hence, Achilles' continuing
refusal, his quick rejection of their offer without any discussion, indicates
that, however he felt at the time of the original quarrel, when such persuasion
might have worked to change his mind, the inexorable emotional logic of his
choice has been at work while he has isolated himself from the fighting.
Whatever one thinks of Agamemnon, his offer to Achilles is
extraordinarily munificent, marks of the very highest status. It would be
difficult to imagine what the king might add to the rich gifts of gold, horses,
towns, loot, daughters, and dowry. The fact that Achilles rejects the
offer so quickly and in such intemperate language indicates at the very least
that away from the battle his passionate sense of his own individuality has
grown so intense that he is unwilling to make any compromise in the name of the
group, even if such a compromise would enormously enhance his status. One
should notice, too, that the reasons Achilles gives for his conduct are
extremely dubious, especially when he complains about everyone getting the same
portions of booty. We know that he has received ample rewards for fighting
in the past (and not merely an equal and paltry share of what everyone gets), as
he himself admits in his reply to Odysseus, "I'll
take back from here more gold, red bronze,/ fair women, and grey iron—all I captured" (9.457). And
Agamemnon's offer, one would think, would be enough to persuade any man, if his
major concern were material rewards. After all, the extravagance of the
compensation is a mark of Agamemnon's extremely high regard for Achilles.
The inadequacy of the reasons and the intensity of the response show that
Achilles' refusal here rests on something other than the normal standards of the
group, something we might called his personal determination to stand apart no
matter what. Achilles may well believe what he states, but the logic of
his refusal does not bear close scrutiny, especially in the extreme language he
uses:
"He cheated me, betrayed me.
His words will cheat no more. To hell with him.
Let him march to his death by his own road,
for Counsellor Zeus has stolen his wits.
I hate his gifts. And he's not worth a damn.
Not even if he gave me ten times, no,
twenty times more than all he owns right now,
or will possess in future, not even
all the wealth amassed in Orchomenus,
or Egyptian Thebes, where huge treasures sit
piled up in houses—that
city of gates,
one hundred of them, through each can ride
two hundred men, horses and chariots
all together—not
even if he gave me
gifts as numerous as grains of sand
by the sea or particles of dust,
not for all that would Agamemnon win
my heart, not until he satisfies me
in full for all my heartfelt bitter pain." (9.468) [9.375]
His
feelings here have become totally disproportionate to the original insult.
Even if he still defines the injuries done to him in terms of the warrior code,
he clearly is developing a much more passionately uncompromising sense of his
own rightness and is rapidly leaving conventional behaviour far behind.
Putting the matter another way, we can say that Achilles' new feelings about
himself have outgrown his ability to explain them. He reaches for the
conventional vocabulary to account for his present attitude, but his appeal to
the code cannot properly describe how he is now feeling, for he is moving out
into uncharted waters where no compromise is possible. After all, this
speech amounts to saying that there is absolutely nothing Agamemnon could do to
satisfy him, even if Agamemnon had virtually all the wealth in the world.
We also
clearly recognize that important changes have been taking place in Achilles
sense of himself, because he now can seriously imagine possibilities outside the
heroic code. He talks about love, going home, getting married, and
remaining idle on his father's property. Dishonour, he claims, is less
important than death. No wonder his listeners are shocked into silence at
his response to Odysseus, for Achilles is rejecting outright everything the
warriors (including him) have ever lived for. To offer love as a
replacement for military glory and status, domestic possessions for plundered
riches, peaceful leisure for heroic effort, and life for fame—all
that astonishes his listeners. It's important to note that these comments
do not necessarily define a new faith Achilles has acquired, for in the
passionate and often illogical appeals to traditional beliefs and to
antithetical principles the speech expresses considerable confusion. But
the mere fact that Achilles can say and think such things amazes his audience.
They no longer recognize the man who walked away from the assembly a few days
before.
The
second spokesman for the embassy, Phoenix, the old family friend and Achilles'
teacher, appeals to him in the name of their affection for each other and of
ancient precedents for heroes whose anger relented. The speech has much
more personal warmth than Odysseus' words, but the effect on Achilles is much
the same. His rejection, though more friendly, is equally firm and
contains at least one significant point which alerts us further to how he is
changing:
"Phoenix,
dear old father, noble lord,
I don't need such honours, for I possess
honour in the will of Zeus. That will keep
me here beside my own hollow ships,
so long as there is breath within my body,
strength in my limbs. But I'll say this to you—
bear it in mind—do
not confuse my heart
with these laments, these speeches of distress,
all serving that heroic son of Atreus.
You should not love him, in case I hate you,
who are now my friend. You would be noble
to join with me, and so injure the man
who injures me. . . ." (9.766) [9.608]
In the
intense conviction of his own rightness, Achilles demands a total lack of
compromise and refuses to think about how loyalty works both ways.
Confident that he is following the will of Zeus (a very bold and self-assertive
claim), he insists that anyone who disagrees with him will not be his friend,
and friends should "injure the man who injures me." But what
about Achilles' obligations to his friends, who are being seriously injured by
Hector and the Trojans? There would be little point in making this
argument to Achilles, however, since he would be unable to perceive the logic in
it, so governed his now by his extreme feelings about himself.
The
final speech, the shortest and most effective, comes from Ajax. He bases
his appeal to Achilles on the friendship of his comrades who "honoured him
above all others there beside the ships" (9.796). We don't normally
think of Ajax as a skilled orator, but here he adopts the masterful tactic of
addressing his opening remarks to Odysseus, as if Achilles were not even
present, a point which is, in a sense, true, because Achilles has, by his
refusal to entertain the offer (which, Ajax points out, any man would accept for
insults much greater than what Achilles has been through) ceased to be a
comrade, a member of the group. Ajax's tactic obviously makes some
connection with Achilles' remaining social feelings, because he does finally
concede that he may return to battle once Hector reaches the ships. The
comment from Achilles promises nothing definite, but the change in tone and the
suggestion of a possible reconciliation reminds the reader that, for all his
peremptory dismissal of Odysseus, Achilles has not yet totally isolated himself
from his companions.
The
speeches in Book 9 merit very close attention because they show us that while
the battles have been going on, something very unusual and significant has been
happening at the end of the Achaean line. In his inactivity, Achilles has
been emancipating himself from the demands of the warrior code and, in so doing,
launched a course of action which brings out hitherto concealed possibilities of
individual assertiveness. His actions arise spontaneously from his own
feelings about himself. There is no sense of predestination or cosmic
determinism here. But the ominous suggestion presents itself that he is
now setting himself over and above all forms of customary restraint, identifying
what he wants as Zeus' will, banishing from his thinking any notion that what
the warrior group believes is important, and regarding anyone who disagrees with
him as an enemy. The angry pique of the original quarrel with Agamemnon is
changing into something much more profound, complex, and dangerous—the isolation of a man who acknowledges no authority
except that of his own passionate will.
Achilles and Patroclus
When Hector succeeds in breaching the Achaean rampart and burning the
ships, Achilles does reconsider, and the decision leads directly to his re-entry
into the war. To understand the significance of this change, we need to
consider in role of Patroclus, Achilles' dearest friend, whose death drives him
back to battle with his feelings transformed. Something about the
relationship with Patroclus is so special to Achilles that, when he loses his
friend, his understanding of the world changes in an extraordinary way.
At first, Patroclus appears unexceptional, another warrior among many
others. As a member of Achilles personal retinue, Patroclus listens to him
singing, pours wine for the ambassadors from Agamemnon, tends the fire, prepares
a bed for Phoenix, and sleeps with a woman in the same hut as Achilles.
Later, in Book 11, he goes to get information about the wounded Achaeans and to
treat Eurypylus, before returning to Achilles and begging to be allowed to
return to battle in order to assist their beleaguered companions. The
pattern of these actions gradually develops a picture of Patroclus as an usually
kind man, attentive to the needs of others and sensitive to their distress, in a
manner unlike anyone else in the poem. Among the constantly assertive
warriors, Patroclus appears something rather special, moved more by simple human
concerns for his friends than by the more egocentric demands of the heroic code.
No other warrior on either side, for example, makes a plea more squarely based
on simple feelings about others than does Patroclus at the opening of Book 16.
Unlike Agamemnon's worry about his brother's wound or Hector's fears about
Andromache, Patroclus' anxiety here is disinterested. He seeks permission
to return to battle, not to enhance his reputation but to provide desperately
needed assistance to their "worn out" friends. Menelaus' later
tribute to Patroclus' as a man who "knew how to treat every man with
care," while reminding his fellow soldiers of Patroclus'
"kindness" (17.818) further strengthens our sense that here we have a
warrior with a special interest in the welfare of others.
The combination of Patroclus' qualities—his constant attendance on
Achilles, his warm concern for others, the strong sense of mutual love between
the two men, and the unique duties he has from his father to look after
Achilles,
"to give shrewd advice,/ prudent counsel, and direction to him"
(11.909)—suggests
that his relationship with Achilles has an important symbolic function.
For in a sense Patroclus emerges as a constant reminder of Achilles' more
sympathetically human side, his continuing social identity as a member of the
warrior group. Patroclus' compassionate attachment to his fellow soldiers
represents a quality which Achilles, by his withdrawal, has rejected, but the
bond between Achilles and Patroclus keeps alive in his spirit at least some
feelings for the warmth of human comradeship and loyalty to the community of
warriors. Whether we see Patroclus and Achilles as two side of the same
man or as two quite separate individuals doesn't really matter. In his
obvious feelings for Patroclus, Achilles displays a part of his nature quite
different from the heroic self-assertiveness with which he conducts himself in
front of everyone else (after the quarrel), and so long as Patroclus remains
alive, Achilles still retains a vital link with the rest of humanity—he still
has feelings for others, even if he is in the grip of fatal passions which
threaten to extinguish those feelings. Hence, we can readily understand
not only why Achilles agrees to Patroclus' tearful request to help the Achaeans
but also why he gives him his personal armour. Of course, there is a
tactical reason (to trick the Trojans into believing that Achilles himself has
returned), but Achilles is also, in a sense, responding personally to the dire
needs of his comrades. He is sending a part of himself out into the battle
once more. It's important to notice, by the way, that this whole incident
is initiated by Achilles when he sends Patroclus out to get information about
the progress of the battle, a sign that he is perhaps not quite so emotionally
isolated from his old friends as he might like to think.
In granting permission to Patroclus to return to battle, Achilles
significantly appears torn by conflicting feelings. On the one hand, he
wants a normal life among his peers, but, on the other, he wishes to emancipate
himself from them as fully as possible. His first instructions appear to
suggest that he has abandoned his lonely quest for ultimate justice on his own
terms:
"Now,
pay attention to what I tell you,
about the goal I have in mind for you,
so you'll win me great honour and rewards,
so all Danaans will send back to me
that lovely girl and give fine gifts as well." (16.104) [16.83]
Achilles
could have achieved these goals long before by agreeing to accept Agamemnon's
offer. Nothing Patroclus does now will produce something equal to that
earlier list of material wealth (and the status that comes with it). That
Achilles should still be making a suggestion like this indicates that a part of
him is still responding to the conventional ways of acting among his peers.
And the restraints he places on Patroclus (not to attack the city itself but to
stop once he has saved the ships) arises, by his own admission, from his desire
not to have his own glory overshadowed.
However,
in the very same speech, Achilles indicates just how powerful the other side of
his nature has become, the uncompromising desire to have everything on his own
terms, without the group:
"Oh,
Father Zeus, Athena, and Apollo—
if only no single Trojan or Achaean
could escape death, and just we two alone
were not destroyed, so that by ourselves
we could take Troy's sacred battlements!" (16.121) [16.97]
By any
normal standard, this wish makes no sense. It obviously goes against the
very human desire of Patroclus to assist his comrades and also denies Achilles'
wish a few lines earlier on for a return of the girl and more honours from the
Achaeans. For if Achilles and Patroclus were the sole survivors, who would
be left to confer status on them and value on the achievement? The
emotional logic, however, is clear enough. Achilles would like to push his
isolation to an extreme by not rejoining the community, but he does not wish to
lose his relationship with Patroclus. He wishes, that is, to answer
only to himself and yet retain his customary humanity. In the very process
of expressing his deepest wishes, he exposes their paradoxical impossibility.
Achilles
After the Death of Patroclus
If we recognize in the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus the
last and most important vestiges of Achilles' basic links to his fellow
warriors, with what he used to be, then we can much more readily grasp the
significance of Achilles' enormous grief at Patroclus' death and the
extraordinary measures he takes to provide the funeral rites. For Achilles
is here lamenting and burying himself—or at least that part which has made him
a loving human being, rooted in a community, with a social identity everyone
acknowledges. With Patroclus dead, he is now moving further out into new
and uncertain territory, without the old links to his fellow men, and, what is
particularly important, he now recognizes the fact. The death of Patroclus
forces Achilles to confront the destructive consequences of his passionate,
individualistic stance and to recognize for the first time the harsh ironies of
fate, without the consolation of a group belief.
The first experience of this insight (which occurs when Achilles hears
the news of Patroclus' death in Book 18) overpowers Achilles. He hurls
himself into the dust and utter a dreadful lament which echoes throughout the
entire world. And when he gets up again, he carries with him the terrible
knowledge of how his life will now play itself out: he will accept his heroic
fate, win revenge for Patroclus, and go to his own death.
"Then
let me die, since I could not prevent
the death of my companion. He's fallen
far from his homeland. He needed me there
to protect him from destruction. So now,
since I'm not returning to my own dear land,
and for Patroclus was no saving light
or for my many other comrades,
all those killed by godlike Hector while I sat
here by the ships, a useless burden
on the earth—and
I'm unmatched in warfare
by any other Achaean armed in bronze,
although in council other men are better—
so let wars disappear from gods and men
and passionate anger, too, which incites
even the prudent man to that sweet rage,
sweeter than trickling honey in men's throats,
which builds up like smoke inside their chests,
as Agamemnon, king of men, just now,
made me enraged. But we'll let that pass." (18.122) [18.98]
What's
extraordinary in these lines is the tone—the terrible
calmness, which enables him to dismiss the passions that have driven him to this
point (although they do not entirely disappear from the story), and to
acknowledge in a way we have not yet witnessed a transcendent detachment from
normal human concerns, so that he can accept his own responsibility in the
quarrel with Agamemnon and even his own imminent death. Having learned
from the death of Patroclus that he cannot have life entirely on his own terms,
he will see it through to the end, true to the feelings that got him where he
is.
It's
important to notice that in the final stages of his story Achilles is not merely
seeking revenge for Patroclus. If that were all, then his actions would be
an absurd response to something that happens all the time in this war, as
Odysseus points out when Achilles refuses to eat:
"Too
many men are dying every day,
one after another. When would anyone
get some relief from fasting? No, the dead
we must bury, then mourn a single day,
hardening our hearts." (19.280) [19.226]
But
Odysseus (and his comrades) cannot understand that Achilles' response to the
death of Patroclus expresses much more than just his grief at the loss of a dear
friend. For Achilles is responding to a radical insight into the nature of
life itself. In wanting both the common human bonding symbolized by his
feeling for Patroclus and the ultimate greatness of the passionate individual
who demands to live life on his own terms, Achilles has sought the impossible.
He has exposed the complex nature of human fate (something the heroic code, the
communal faith, normally keeps concealed). This he now recognizes.
His actions from this point on arise out his sense of the injustice of human
life, which will not grant any man, no matter how intense his passions or great
his achievements, all his desires. Having unwittingly sacrificed his
common humanity, Achilles will not seek to regain it but will continue in the
lonely splendour and suffering of the man who will now pursue the mystery of
fate to its centre and who, in complete freedom, accepts total responsibility
for his personal confrontation with it. On the face of it, Achilles does
return to group, but no longer as a fully participating member. He refuses
to eat or sleep, seems unconcerned about status, and thinks of only one thing,
getting back on the battlefield.
The
full recognition of what life means gives Achilles a paradoxical quality.
One the one hand he becomes extraordinarily brutal, an invincible and immoveable
butcher of human life, free from any conventional social or emotional restraint,
a man who will fight against anything that stands in his way, even the gods
themselves. On the other hand, he sometimes displays a transcendent calm,
a fully mature acceptance of the mysteries of experience, unaided by any of the
rituals men devise to shield them from a complete knowledge of their own
condition. The first characteristic turns Achilles into a human firestorm,
inexorably destroying everything in his path. The second gives him an
almost prophetic power appropriate to a man who has seen deep into the heart of
darkness and returned to the world of human striving. Achilles' actions
against the Trojans in battle and in the bloody sacrifice of animals and men on
Patroclus' funeral pyre do not stem solely from his desire for revenge against
Hector. His wrath here he directs against the world itself, which has
refused to grant him everything he demanded from it and which has killed
Patroclus. Without Patroclus and what he represents, Achilles has no
reason to live, and his remaining human passions express themselves in a cruel
slaughter against everything that has disappointed his greatest hopes, including
his attack on the Scamander river, against both nature and the god. If his
will has come to nothing, then he will will nothingness by attacking the world
as an uncompromising destroyer. At the same time, however, Achilles' great
spiritual suffering has opened his eyes to a much more all-encompassing vision
of what it means to exists as a human being alone before fate.
Both of
these qualities emerge in the incident with Lycaon, in which Achilles delivers
one of the most extraordinarily powerful speeches in the entire poem:
So
Lycaon begged for mercy from Achilles.
But the response he got was brutal:
"You fool,
don't offer me a ransom or some plea.
Before Patroclus met his deadly fate,
sparing Trojans pleased my heart much more.
I took many overseas and sold them.
But now not one of them escapes his death,
no one whom god delivers to my hands,
here in front of Ilion, not one—
not a single Trojan, especially none
of Priam's children. So now, my friend,
you too must die. Why be sad about it?
Patroclus died, a better man than you.
And look at me. You see how fine I am,
how tall, how handsome? My father's a fine man,
the mother who gave birth to me a goddess.
Yet over me, as well, hangs fate—my death.
There'll come a dawn, or noon, or evening,
when some man will take my life in battle—
he'll strike me with his spear or with an arrow
shot from his bowstring." (21.115) [21.98]
Achilles
can dismiss Lycaon as a "fool" because he knows that pleading for life
in the face of death makes no sense, especially when death comes in the form of
an invincible warrior for whom the warrior code has ceased to exist in any
meaningful way. In a world without love and companionship, death is the
only reality that matters, and anyone who is afraid of the end of an absurd life
is indeed a fool. But then he can call his helpless victim "my
friend" and in a kindly tone insist upon their common equality in the face
of death. Killing and being killed, Achilles now understands, belong to
the inevitable order of the universe, beyond all human custom, all systems of
value, all illusion-giving conventions of status. Death, which makes all
men equal, no man can evade or transcend not even the greatest of men who
deliberately sets himself apart. He and Lycaon are playing their parts as
human beings on this earth, according to the fatal conditions into which they
were born. That Achilles can declare his common humanity openly with such
eloquence while performing the killing that ends human life and brings him
closer to his own death indicates just how far he has travelled into the fatal
ironies of human existence. His urge to destroy everything, including
later the corpse of Hector, brings out his radical dissatisfaction with life,
but his moments of terrible composure suggest that the process of transformation
continues. The difference between the normal warrior's passionate boasting
and fierce preoccupation with his own status and Achilles' lonely detached calm,
the awesome tranquility of his solitary, irresistible, aware ruthlessness,
reveals the unique qualities of his present spiritual limbo.
Not
until after the killing of Hector does Achilles succeed in emancipating himself
from the passionately destructive demands of his nature. The heroic calm
breaks when he slays the Trojan hero and savagely mutilates the corpse.
And though he can finally fall asleep, he gets no easy rest. We know from
Achilles' attitude to Agamemnon during the funeral games that the traditional
concerns of social man have largely ceased to matter to him. He can make
his peace with the commander-in-chief and even award him an unearned prize,
because such normal concerns as status do not matter to him any more. The
suffering he has undergone and the death which he knows awaits him have given
Achilles a wholly different view of human life, as a result of which the reasons
for the original quarrel now seem trivial. For the sake of his friend (and
for what they shared together) he will observe the customary funeral rites, but
he is no longer driven by the intense search for his own personal glory.
When he talks about his own funeral mound, he specifies that he wants
"nothing excessive—what seems appropriate."
Achilles
and Priam
The
final stage of Achilles' story takes place in the encounter with Priam, in the
meeting between the isolated young destroyer and the long-suffering old king,
both soon to perish and both filled with sorrow for the conditions of human
life. For the first time in the poem, two opponents face each other as
men, not as warriors, and for all the bloody history of their antagonism they
interact as human beings first. They touch each other's real flesh, rather
than trying to puncture each other's hearts with spears hurled through
artistically decorated metal. No gesture in the poem is more moving than
Priam's initial greeting:
He
came up to Achilles, then with his fingers
clasped his knees and kissed his hands, those dreadful hands,
man-killers, which had slain so many of his sons. (24.587) [24.477]
The two
men share an awareness of the imperative claims of their common humanity—beyond
status, riches, past exploits, present enmity. Through the intense
suffering each has experienced they can unite momentarily in a single act of
human compassion:
Priam
finished. His words roused in Achilles
a desire to weep for his own father. Taking Priam's hand,
he gently moved him back. So the two men there
both remembered warriors who'd been slaughtered.
Priam, lying at Achilles' feet, wept aloud
for man-killing Hector, and Achilles also wept
for his own father and once more for Patroclus.
The sound of their lamenting filled the house. (24.625) [14.509]
And the
two men so different in all other respects, can demonstrate a mutual respect and
tenderness in a shared sense of divinely ordained human grief:
"But come now,
sit on this chair. Though we're both feeling pain,
we'll let our grief lie quiet on our hearts.
For there's no benefit in frigid tears.
That's the way the gods have spun the threads
for wretched mortal men, so they live in pain,
though gods themselves live on without a care." (24.643) [24.522]
Now
Achilles can at last surrender Hector's corpse. In so doing, he new
understanding of life moves beyond all selfish passion into a state of pure
acceptance, a state of being earned through the stages of suffering he has
experienced. Revenge on the body of Hector no longer matters. This
condition is not a stoic resignation, nor is it achieved without effort, as the
suggestion of the old anger indicates, when Achilles momentarily turns on Priam.
But Achilles' final acknowledgment of Priam, like the old king's of him, creates
a picture of their mutual awe before the ineffably mystery of life:
When
they'd satisfied their need for food and drink,
then Priam, son of Dardanus, looked at Achilles,
wondering at his size and beauty, like gazing
face to face upon a god. Achilles looked at Priam,
marvelling at his royal appearance and the words he heard. (24.779) [24.628]
For the
first time in the poem, two men look at each other, say nothing, and appreciate
each other simply for what they are as human beings. There is nothing left
for them to say or do.
The
Funeral Rites for Hector
The
last scenes of the poem depict the funeral rites for Hector, with the
traditional rituals in place. Hector here receives the immortality for
which he and all the warriors have striven throughout their lives, a public
burial and the lasting memorial appropriate to a great hero. In that
sense, Hector's final rites are a suitable summing up of all the deaths we have
witnessed. In the celebration around the corpse the hero enters the
communal memories of his people, his greatness is assured, and he achieves the
only triumph over death available to him. At the same time, however, the
laments of the Trojan women over Hector's bier and the very abrupt close remind
us that the heroic careers of Hector and of Achilles, who is now waiting to die
and to receive his memorial, and the deaths of all the other heroes have
effected no significant changes. The war will go on; Troy will fall; the
warriors will continue to fight elsewhere. That is the fate of human life,
the glory and the terror, the triumph and the destruction, the paradoxical
ironic mystery from which there is no escape.
Hector
and Achilles and Tragic Heroism
Having
explored in some detail the stories of Hector and of Achilles, we can return to
the question with which we began: Can we usefully apply the term tragic hero or
tragic character to them? I have no wish here to argue for a
particular definition of that key term which I might then employ as an
analytical tool to answer the question. And so I propose to offer a few
cursory remarks comparing the two warriors with characters who are, by common
agreement, among our most famous tragic heroes (I have in mind especially
Oedipus, Lear, and Macbeth).
Central
to the stories of Oedipus, Lear, and Macbeth (and other figures we call tragic)
is a willed isolation, a determination to have the world answer to them rather
than entertaining any thoughts of compromise. Often this sense of
isolation develops slowly and subconsciously, usually in response to a decision
the character himself has made, but when he becomes aware of his emotional (and
sometimes physical) displacement from the group around him, he
characteristically becomes even more resolute to proceed on his own, even (or
especially) when he recognizes the self-destructive consequences looming ahead.
This refusal to compromise his sense of passionate individuality, his sense of
his own absolute rightness, in defiance of any commonsense response, makes him
distinctly different from comic heroes, who typically strive to adapt, learn,
adjust, endure, and forgive, so that they can be reintegrated into their
society, and it is the great mystery at the heart of the tragic response,
arising from deep within the hearts of certain people, who would rather perish
on their own terms than live by anyone else's standards.
This
highly developed sense of passionate egocentricity is, I would claim, foreign to
Hector. Throughout the poem he remains a loyal servant of the social code
which has made him what he is, except for the moment when he panics and runs.
And this exception appears to confirm the previous remark, because when Hector
is fully isolated, he disintegrates, and he requires the presence of a fellow
warrior to bring him back to his senses, so that he dies a firm believer in what
he has always lived for. By contrast, when Achilles collapses in the dust
at the new of Patroclus' death, he gets up again even more locked into his
assertive and solitary individuality.
Achilles,
we can all acknowledge, goes though a very different experience, which makes
parts of his story similar in some respects to the stories of Oedipus, Lear, and
Macbeth—especially
his willed determination to stand apart, no matter what the cost. And,
like them, the suffering he undergoes gives him, as we have seen, insights
granted to no one else in the poem, including Hector. There is no doubt
that if Homer had included the death of Achilles we would have little trouble
considering him our first great tragic hero. But Homer does not include
that episode.
Of course, not all tragic heroes and heroines die (e.g., Oedipus in Oedipus
the King and Nora in A Doll's House), and some have argued that the
term tragedy applies also to the nature of the suffering, without
reference to the ending, the agony that comes from willing oneself to face up to
fate or the gods with no consoling social illusions (so in that sense we might
say that Job's experience during the suffering he undergoes is tragic although
his complete story clearly is not, since he eventually compromises and is
rewarded handsomely for doing so). Much depends on the extent to which we
feel that Achilles has by the end of the poem become happily reintegrated into
Achaean society. Schein, for example, observes that Achilles at the end of
the epic "is re-established as his distinctive self—as the hero he was .
. . in the beginning" (162), an interpretation that, in effect, makes
Achilles' story rather like Job's (3).
Such a view strikes me as strongly overstated, an attempt to neutralize any
discomfort we may feel with what we have experienced in following Achilles'
life. We are given virtually no details about Achilles after the
meeting with Priam (although the final mention of him as going to bed with
Briseis casually suggests he's not as displaced and suffering as we have seen
him). This point needs to be balanced against his own sense and ours of
his impending death.
My own sense is that Achilles' story is close enough to those of the
other tragic heroes I have mentioned to permit us to place him in their company.
What he goes through is certainly comparable to the experiences of Oedipus and
Lear and Macbeth and others, and the effect of his story, like theirs, is a
profound and moving challenge to our modern faith in, say, the progressive
rational amelioration of life in the community or in the benevolent operations
of a providential God or in a moral universe. Achilles' actions have
momentarily torn aside the illusions men devise to enable them to understand the
mystery of nature, and he has taken upon himself the full consequences of that
action. His suffering, like that of the other heroes, alters nothing in
the world, but it affirms everything about the greatest spirit of man, the
striving to rise above the ironies of war and of life itself. That's why
it is so difficult to reach a clear moral evaluation of Achilles (Is he good?
Is he bad?)—for, like so many great heroes we call tragic, he has pushed
himself into a realm beyond the range of such human moral categories (4).
Notes
to Essay Six
(1) Those who seek to understand Hector by paying close attention to his
psychology (not always the most reliable way of understanding the characters in
the Iliad) may see an important connection between his conscious
hesitation here and the unconscious ironies evoked in his conversation with
Andromache in Book 6. J. M. Redfield offers the illuminating suggestion
that Hector's terror at the gleaming armour of the approaching Achilles is a
deliberate reminder of Astyanax's terror at the sight of his father's military
appearance earlier (158). Hector's momentary doubt immediately before his
duel with Ajax may be significant in this regard (in Book 7). [Back to Text]
(2) Paolo Vivante claims that Achilles' anger is "a divine, not a
human emotion" (54), and Schein states that from the outset of the poem
Achilles is "radically different from [the other Achaeans]" (91). [Back to
Text]
(3) Many people, of course, have objected to the ending of Job's story as
a violation of the entire emotional logic of the tragedy (a later interpolation,
perhaps, to bring us a more comfortable picture of God's justice). Schein
is determined to mitigate any potentially tragic effect the Iliad may
have, so that the poem becomes much more optimistic and reassuring to modern
readers. For example, he sees in the ending something in which "love
and solidarity seem somehow more powerful than death and destruction" and
which points "beyond conventional heroic values toward an ethic of
humaneness and compassion" (187). This, it strikes me, is sugar
coating the darkly ironic weight of the entire poem, including the ending, to
make it more palatable to modern sensibilities. And given the intensity of
Achilles' and Hector's experiences and Homer's complex vision of warfare as
man's fate, I find Michael Silk's summary judgment, even with his later
qualifications about Achilles, very odd: "The Iliad is primarily
celebratory, not exploratory. It presents the unchanging surface of
experience, rather than the depths where nothing is constant" (102).
[Back to Text]
(4) That may be why those who try to come up with a clear moral
evaluation of Achilles sound so oddly wrong, as in Moses Hadas' attempt to trace
the "moral deterioration" of Achilles: "The balance of right and
wrong is depressed on the side of wrong when he rejects Agamemnon's bid for
reconciliation. He rehabilitates himself and asserts the victory of
civilization when he overcomes his own passionate impulse to abuse the body of
Hector and returns it to Priam" (16). That may reassure us about the
importance of moral categories, but the terms are irrelevant to Achilles' view
of why he is acting the way he is. That's what makes him such a disturbing
figure. [Back
to Text]
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