Monday, February 20, 2012
When first picking up this book, I assumed it would be about the Trojan war, or at least the last year of it. However, now that I've read the whole thing through, the Iliad is really all about the wrath of Achilles. The poem starts out at the beginning of his anger, and then the poem ends with his fury finally subsiding. The fact that he allowed the Trojans eleven days to bury Hektor showed that his anger is finally at bay. Also, the scene between Achilles and Priam was touching; Achilles likens Priam to his own father Peleus, and we see Achilles' soft side. I would've thought the poem would end with the fall of Troy and the outcome of the war, but that's because I thought the poem was about the war. The fact that it's truly about Achilles' emotion of wrath makes me think the Greeks placed a lot of importance on emotion. I have also read Euripides' The Medea, and that takes Medea's wrath to be one of the main focuses too.
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2 comments:
Yes, it is odd how our idea, and even our memory, of the Iliad and the Odyssey is quite different than the poems themselves. Most people remember only the adventures of Odysseus, but most of the poem actually takes place in Ithaka. You'll see that the focus on anger in the Iliad is taken up in the Aeneid, where one of the big philosophical questions is, what is the cause of such anger? Divine or human? Aeneas is almost a reverse Achilles-- he starts off trying to control his emotions and ends up overpowered by rage.
I agree it focused on different points than I assumed it would. i guess it makes sense though, because revenge and wrath are important aspects of Greek culture as we learn about it today.
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