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Creative writing about war
Dilemma of Achilles in the illiad
Dilemma of Achilles in the illiad
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Recommended: Creative writing about war
Classical Civilisation
“The Iliad glorifies war”
To what extent do you agree with this statement?
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Achilles suffering from war casualty- Achilles’ Decision Line 23
Offer of reward for return of Hector’s body - book 24 line 227
I disagree with the statement “The Iliad glorifies war”. While the Iliad speaks highly of the soldiers involved in the war, and frequently references the idea of eternal glory, I would argue that the choice to include such parts was made to criticise war. The Iliad also showcases lots of suffering in the Trojan war.
Throughout the poem the idea of eternal glory is often mentioned. A particularly striking example of this is in The Embassy To Achilles, when Achilles is rejecting the offer of many gifts being made
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This shows that they have no control over their legacies, and therefore criticises the notion of glory within violent death, a force which he shows to motivate almost all actions in the poem, again disproving the …show more content…
Throughout the poem we are lead to believe that Achilles is a great hero, and that Hector is a modest man with a great amount of compassion for his family, and a mostly successful military leader. He is arguably motivated entirely by the fear of letting his family down We’re shown how incompetent his younger brother, Paris, is, and generally given the impression that he is the best man in the Trojan forces. Yet, here we are seeing Achilles, a supposed glorious hero, mistreating his body horribly. While there is a mention of a personal battle between the men in the Embassy To Achilles, we aren’t lead to believe that there were any reasons for such a rivalry other than the fact that they are the best soldiers of their respective armies. Although ultimately, Achilles kills Hector as revenge for the death of his close friend Patroclus, the point could easily be made that the attempted disfigurement was because of Achilles’ pride and self obsession. He has killed the leader of the opposing army, and possible hundreds of other Trojans amidst his aristeia, and is bragging about it to everyone who will pay attention. This is not in line with the idea of eternal glory he wanted so much earlier, and gives the impression that he no longer cares for his public image, and only for his own violent desires. This picks holes both in the idea of glory
Simone Weil’s essay “The Iliad: or Poem of Force” places importance on human interaction, the grounding, empathic, human relations which are rare, fleeting, and necessary. She claims Force to be a governing factor in all human interaction, and the ‘thingness’, which force prescribes to humans, as a dangerous, uncontrollable factor of human existence. In order to overcome force, one must direct all their attention towards recognizing others suffering. In her other essay, “Attention and Will,” Weil discusses religious attention as the most important. She claims that one must practice a passive attention to God in order to reach a divinity beyond reality itself which holds truth.
There are many controversies involving the Iliad, but the most important is about the characters in the Iliad demonstrating barbaric and civilized behavior. Questions about this and the answers can be found by looking at Hektor, Paris and Achilles. Hektor represents the civilized being, always looking for a peaceful resolution to a problem. Achilles refuses to fight and somewhat resembles Paris, the civilized coward. Paris would stay back and relax while the battle raged outside. Hektor was always out on the frontlines doing all he could to help his army. Achilles, angered by Agamemnon, betrays his own side and tells Zeus to bring a plague on the Achaeans, causing them to almost be wiped out. This was a barbarous act.
One of the first portrayals of Ancient Greece warfare comes from Homers epic the Iliad. During the Homeric Age the center of political organization were the households. The conduct of war was based on the ability of the leader of the household to assemble his supporters. However the cost of buying armor and weaponry was expensive therefore only the few wealthy could afford it. This created an aristocratic elite with the mode of fighting being the heroic model, a one-on-one battle between elites. This changes with the social change in the eight-century, where the phalanx will take over the mode of warfare.
In Book 21, Achilles kills a hostage at his mercy, whose life he has sparred in the past. By the end of Book 21, Achilles has killed so many Trojan’s that the river is clogged with the bodies of his victims. Achilles behaves without a care for human life, as well as his treatment toward Hector before and after he kills him. As stated in Blucher’s article, Achilles is found to go berserk, committing atrocities to both living and dead. This, for Shay, is the story of the Iliad and also as Shay goes on to demonstrate, the story of many Vietnam combat veterans”. (Blucher). Before their battle Hector begs Achilles to honor his corpse if he is killed in war, and Achilles refuse, saying, “Don’t try to cut any deals with me, Hector. Do lions make peace treaties with men? Do wolves and lambs agree to get along? No, they hate each other to the core, And that’s how it is between you and me, No talk of agreements until one of us Falls and gluts Ares with his blood” (Homer). His statement of intent to dishonor Hector’s corpse and to damage the body after his enemy’s death, shows that he had anger towards his superiors. The most disturbing portrayal from Achilles is his behavior, when Hector’s father Priam meets with him to ask for Hector’s body. This show Achilles’ anger is driven by rage towards other superior officers in the
Throughout the Iliad, heroic characters make decisions based on a specific set of principles, which are referred to as the “code of honor.” The heroic code that Homer presents to readers is easy to recognize because the heroic code is the cause for many of the events that take place, but many of the characters have different perceptions of how highly the code should be regarded. Hector, the greatest of the Trojan warriors, begins the poem as a model for a hero. His dedication and firm belief in the code of honor is described many times throughout the course of the Iliad. As a reward for heroic traits in battle, prizes were sometimes awarded to victors of war. In Book 1 Achilles receives Chryseis as a prize and a symbol of honor. Heroism had its rewards and its setbacks which ultimately was the backbone of the Illiad in the case of Achilles prize. Hector, arguably the greatest Trojan warrior or even the bravest of the Homeric heroes is very fierce and fights for what he believes is his destiny. In book VI Hector expresses his bravery when Andromache pleads with Hector not to fight when Hector says, “But I would die of shame to face the men of Troy and the Trojan woman trailing their long robes if I would shrink from battle now, a coward. Nor does the sprit urge me on that way. I’ve learned it all too well. To stand up bravely, always to fight in the front ranks of Trojan soldiers, winning my father great glory, glory for myself” (VI, 387).
Throughout history, people evaluated themselves and others based on moral judgements. The basis of those evaluations changed over time. In the Homeric period, from approximately 1200-800 BCE, people practiced “warrior ethics.” Warrior ethics were based on teleology, meaning all things had a purpose/function in society. The concept of good/bad was directly related to how well the function was performed. For example, a warrior was considered good when he was an excellent warrior and bad if he performed poorly. In Homeric times, excellence was considered god-like.
The Ancient Greeks admired their heroes and tried to learn from both their achievements and their mistakes. They believed that most great leaders and warriors followed a predictable behavior cycle, which often ended tragically. In Homer’s epic poem, The Iliad, Achilles is a great warrior who traces the stages of the behavior cycle twice, from arete to hubris to ate and then to nemesis. Achilles is a highly skilled warrior and a great leader who becomes a narcissist and an arrogant person, which leads to selfish and childish behavior resulting in the death of his best friend. Following Patroclus’ death, Achilles repeats the behavior cycle by regaining his courage and motivation, and goes back to battle against Hector. The pride he feels in killing Hector and his overpowering hatred for him, leads Achilles to another bad decision: disrespecting the body of his enemy. This foolish choice leads directly to Achilles death. Although The Iliad is mainly known as a story about the Trojan War, it is understood as a story about Achilles and his struggle to be a hero.
Throughout the Iliad, Homer portraits the extent to which honor plays a role in the lives of Greeks and the manner in which they are willing to sacrifice in order to reach their goals. The Iliad is set during the Trojan War, a particularly long and bloody war, fought not over boundary disagreements, and not over political conflicts, and not to protect the nation. Rather, it was a war fought to defend the personal honor. The possession of women was important to a man’s standing and honor. Paris’ theft of Helen struck a huge blow to the honor of Menelaus and becomes the initial cause of the Trojan War. Consequently, Menelaus, the Spartan ruler, called upon his brother Agamemnon to gather the Greek forces to launch the war against Paris demanding the return of Helen and reinstating the honor for the king. The war lasted for ten years and cost innumerable Greeks’ lives and brought incurable pain upon their families. To Greek heroes, honor is more important than their life as much as that life would be meaningless without it, and they even willingly sacrifice their lives in order...
Hector fights for belief and respect while Achilles fights out of rage and rashness. Achilles is not respected by his men, rather he is feared. Nobody wants to receive the blunt of the attack when Achilles randomly flies into a rage, therefore his men are terrified of him and allow him to do as he pleases. Within the first book of the poem, we read that Achilles is considered by many to be "god-like". (King Agamemnon, Book 1, line 154)
Throughout the text, major characters seem to be at constant battle with their different emotions. This inner conflict is mirrored by the everyday conflicts between the gods. Just as Zeus and Hera are constantly at odds with one another, so are the different sides of Achilles: his cultural responsibility, pride, honor, and revenge. No one is completely at peace with his or her conflicting emotions in The Iliad – and therefore, neither are the gods, who represent these emotions. Hector is a prime example of a human who finds himself torn between two forces: his love for his growing family, and his duty as a prince of Troy. He admits to Andromache that he worries about his own mortality, but emphasizes that “I would die of shame to face the men of Troy…if I would shrink from battle now, a coward.” (Homer 6: 523, 525). Hector’s deeply ingrained sense of honor and loyalty to home is clearly established in the beginning of the text. Therefore, when Zeus later grants Hector “power to kill and kill till you cut your way to the benched ships” (Homer 11: 241-242), it is not too much of a stretch to attribute Hector’s dodged perseverance to his upbringing and rigid sense of duty, rather than to the
The Iliad, translated by Robert Fitzgerald, is an epic about the Trojan war which displays the complicated relationships between the Greeks and the Trojans in their final year of battle. Akhilleus has all the attributes of a great warrior and distinguishes himself as one of the strongest fighters on the Akhaian side. In The Iliad, Akhilleus’ motivation is led by his thirst for bravery and the desire to leave behind a legacy causing him to go to far extents to fulfill Akhilleus’ need for pride. However, this is only attained after his conversation with Priam, when Akhilleus learns what it means to show honor in a sense of camaraderie and loyalty.
The themes: the power of a name, guest-friendship, glory, and honor appear in books six through eight of The Iliad. These themes are important to consider in relation to each other. Glory elevates honor, meaning that same actions that help one obtain glory can also yield honor to the person, or the person’s family. A name carries the glory and honor of the bearer in a record that extends beyond the life of the individual. In the next generation, the name reminds the community of the legacy left by previous generations. In this way, the level of glory and honor obtained by one family member can apply to the entire family. Therefore pursuing glory and honor is not solely a selfish pursuit,
...den tone, and despite all the fame and greatness Hektor has acquired, all is lost in Troy, as a result of his death. Homer must be portraying an anti-war attitude here, otherwise he would surely end the play with the triumph of Achilleus, or the victory of the Argives over Troy. If he had positive or even neutral thoughts about war, he would end with and upbeat triumph, but he does not. The final book makes the Iliad out to be a tragedy, which is exactly what Homer thought war was, an unnecessary tragedy. The point that Homer wants to get across with his final book is that all the action and all the fighting that went on for all those years is not something to be proud of, for it ruined multitudes of lives. The extreme agony and woe only help to show that Homer believes that the positives of war could never encompass all the sorrow and negative consequences of war.
The Iliad tells the story of the Trojan War, which lasted 10 years. The Grecians eventually won the war, but the outcome could have very easily shifted due to a quarrel between King Agamemnon and Achilles. Pride and anger is what the two men were fighting about. This story is a very good example of how those two simple emotions can lead to tragedy.
In the poem, Iliad, Achilles and Hector both show relative heroism in their own different ways. Achilles may have been the more popular hero, but Hector had great heroism as well. Each of these characters possess their own different strengths and weaknesses. These two characters both have pride as being one of their main weaknesses. Hector seems as if he would suit best in the modern world, but there are a few different reasons as to why the ancients may have chose Achilles. Hector and Achilles both lost a lot by letting their pride get in the way of their heroism. Both of these characters were their country’s best warrior. Achilles and Hector have very different personalities, and very different ways of approaching situations.