The Iliad by Homer has much to say about war as it is fought today. It tells the story that war is both the bringer of glory to its young fighters and the destroyer of their lives. It tells the story of fighters obliged to serve under incompetent superiors. It tells the story of war as an attempt to preserve a treasured way of life. It tells the story, too, of the incalculable gulf between civilian life and the front lines; of atrocities and frivolous slaughter; of war’s mercilessness to women and children; of friendships and empathy across the battle lines. It tells the story of love and comradery. Most of all, however, it tells the story about the harrowing losses of war: of a soldier losing his closest compatriot, of a parent losing his …show more content…
More than that though, it epitomizes an essential part of the metaphysical order of the universe, the divine arrangements according to which things behave the way they do. This insight is first suggested within the opening invocation:
These oft quoted lines represent the ironic heart of the poem; at the beginning, Homer explicitly states the focus of the story on anger, a destructive rage condemning noble men to agony and death, reducing them to nothing but the flesh of their former self. The lesser-cited second half, however, brings to light a perhaps second focus (add?)
To start, it may be worth noting that the so-called heroes have not embraced war unequivocally. Many, as is supposedly built within the collective unconscious, express a wish for a world without warfare or, rather, a different arrangement preventing the need for the killing and deaths on the battlefield. Alas, however, there is no safe haven, and thus, must accept final death as inevitable, for warfare, as defined, has been established by a divine will;
Even in the examination of perhaps the most famous evocation of a warrior’s faith, that being the speech Sarpedon, makes the ever-convincing point that the glory of a hero is by no means worth the detriments should human beings have a way of escaping
The Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger once said “Perjor est bello timor ipse belli”, which translates to: “the dread of war is worse than war itself”. With this quote, Seneca identifies that war has both its physical and mental tolls on its participants. The psychological and emotional scars of war do much more damage to a solider than the actual physical battles. Tim O’ Brien repeats this idea many years later in his novel “The Things They Carried”, by describing how emotional burdens outweigh the physical loads that those in war must endure. What keeps them alive is the hope that they may one day return home to their loved ones. Yet, the weight of these intangible “items” such as “grief, terror, love, longing” overshadow the physical load they must endure since they are not easily cast away.
As can be seen, Paul Boyer, Tim O’Brien, and Kenneth W. Bagby, convey the notion that war affects the one’s self the most. Through the use of literary devices: tone, mood, pathos, and imagery, these 3 authors portray that war affects a person’s self most of all. War is not only a battle between two opposing sides, but it can also be a mental conflict created within a person. Although war is able to have an effect on physical relationships between family, friends, or even society, conflict within oneself is the most inevitable battle one must face during war times.
He states, "The myth of war is essential to justify the horrible sacrifices required in war, the destruction and death of innocents. It can be formed only by denying the reality of war, by turning the lies, the manipulation, the inhumanness of war into the heroic ideal" (26). Chris Hedges tries to get the point across that in war nothing is as it seems.... ... middle of paper ...
Through both of Stephen Crane's story "A Mystery of Heroism" and poem "War is Kind" he gives several different examples on how war was from this time and how it brought out the real person in any soldier whether they were scared or daring to be a hero for others. Them proving that they can be a hero themselves even if its from getting water for the rest of your team to comforting ones that have lost loved ones through war in the end of the grand scheme of things.
Throughout the Iliad the warriors' dream of peace is projected over and over again in elaborate similes developed against a background of violence and death. Homer is able to balance the celebration of war's tragic, heroic values with scenes of battle and those creative values of civilized life that war destroys. The shield of Achilles symbolically represents the two poles of human condition, war and peace, with their corresponding aspects of human nature, the destructive and creative, which are implicit in every situation and statement of the poem and are put before us in something approaching abstract form; its emblem is an image of human life as a whole.
Homer’s moral exemplars in the heroic tragedy, The Iliad, can be analyzed to further understand warrior ethics. Agamemnon, a powerful warrior king, was proud and arrogant. These qualities made him an excellent warrior and the Greeks respected him. However, Agamemnon demonstrated excess pride and arrogance, as well as stubbornness. The Greeks believed that people must face their destiny with pride and nobility.
...not theirs to fight. It is essential that the Tragic Hero accepts his necessary doom. It completes the hero. “I know my hour is come...Farewell to thee...I shall have glory by this losing day” (205).
...y did not create a typical hero in his protagonist; one who wins a certain battle and is recognized as victorious. Instead, he created one who succeeds by being defeated, or by dying. However, because many people did not understand what he did, that he "died for life", it was not necessarily considered noble. He was defeated personally, but the reason he died was worth far more than his personal gain.
The Iliad is an epic tale of war and hero’s within the Greek way of life. A
"The Iliad is a poem that celebrates the heroic values war imposes on its votaries (27)." Homer himself describes war as "bringing glory to man." War is a huge part of both the Achaeans and the Trojans' lives. Characters gain glory through their performances and bravery in battle. Furthermore, Homer persuades the reader that war is the glorious way to settle a dispute. For example, Hector and other Trojans scorn Paris for backing down from Menelaus. On the other hand, Achilles acquires glory by deferring the option of a long, peaceful life in order to fight and become an epic hero. The characters in The Iliad value honor and glory to such a degree that they are willing to give up life itself in order to possess it.
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.
Simone Weil argues that the way Homer presents war and the use of force in the Iliad, in all of its brutality, violence, and bitterness bathes the work in the light of love and justice (pg 25). The point Weil is making is that by depicting the suffering of all of these men regardless of their side, or strength Homer equalizes them in a “condition common to all men”(pg 25). Because Homer equalizes them the reader can feel empathy, or at least compassion for all of the men. However while Weil is correct about how Homer’s descriptions of war and force reveal justice and love, she is wrong in thinking that justice and love are mere “accents” to the Iliad, and progress through the story “without ever becoming noticeable”(pg 25). Homer not only reveals this underlying idea to the reader through his tone and even handedness, but also through Achilles’ journey. By the end of the Iliad Achilles understands justice and love in much the same way that the reader does.
...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 romanticism of war is separate and opposite of romanticism for life. They cannot exist at the same time. War stands for death and destruction and life is the opposite. There is a constant clash between the love of decency: courage and devotion to your fellow men, and the love of life free of the horrors of war. War, and all things that propel war, is inherently evil. Beliefs in heroism, honor, and dignity are all idealistic. To the soldier on the field of battler their sole purpose is self-preservation. The only way that soldiers can persevere through the God awful shitty mess of war is through the brotherhood between the soldiers. This bond does not negate the hypocrisy of war; instead, it allows the men to survive it. The brotherhood is love for the sake of self-preservation. At its core, war dehumanizes people and one cannot have love for life if they are less than human.
Throughout history, normal-everyday people rise to power, only to coerce or ruin a society and its morals. There are also some who rise and fight back. In stories and in real life, these “heroes” who fight back usually end up dead. Even today, a martyr’s sacrifice is essential in most of society’s changes.