Rage In The Iliad

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The Iliad, being the first great book, is described in many ways from a summarizing standpoint. The first word of the Iliad is rage. Rage is a feeling of anger that originates from true feelings of regret, loss, and love, and fury in one which then is put forth through a response to that stimuli. This stimuli is the result of what Homer loves to portray in the Iliad to us; death. The bloody and gruesome descriptions of the many battle scenes are what turn the reader into an intrigued yet somewhat horrified of these sights and results. The sad thing about those results is that it’s an actual person lying there; a father, son, brother, grandfather, or even a husband, who “But on the ground lay, dearer to the vultures than to their wives.” This connection proves that once that line is crossed, the dead become nothing and the killer will either continue on in fight and survival or …show more content…

When Achilles says “don’t provoke me old man”, Achilles seems ever more violent. Why does Homer have to ensure violence upon every corner of the Iliad? Even the accord between Priam and Hector that Homers convinces the reader that they are both god-like and are of such power and honor. Even after killing man after man, the honor and the kleos remains. Violence, as seen in the movie Gladiator, is adored by the public and cheer for the death of the gladiator that cannot fight anymore whose fate is in the hands of the gladiator looking down upon them. Same goes for the gods. The gods control the fate, the destiny, the flow of all the lives under them. In Homers Iliad, humor is seen only amongst the gods. This is true because humor is seen as a weakness, or a way to make someone vulnerable and laugh. The gods and their immortality have no worries nor fear of anything. This guarantees a set tone of understanding for the reader to see why the fate of Hector or the fate of Achilles is all controlled by the

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