The main theme of the Iliad is stated in the first line, as Homer asks the Muse to sing of the “wrath of Achilles.” This wrath, all its permutations, transformations, influences, and consequences, makes up the themes of the Iliad. In essence, the wrath of Achilles allows Homer to present and develop, within the cultural framework of heroic honor (see Critical Essay 1), the ideas of strife, alienation, and reconciliation.
The wrath of Achilles is provoked by Achilles’ sense of honor as a result of eris or discord, which leads to the warrior’s alienation from the Greeks and eventually from human society. Second, the wrath of Achilles sets him up in clear contrast to his great Trojan counterpart in the story—Hektor. Finally, the assuaging of Achilles’ wrath leads to the reconciliation and reintegration of the warrior, first into his own community and second into the larger community of all humanity. When considering these three basic ideas that result from the wrath of Achilles, readers can see a grand design in the work that centers not so much on war as on the growth and development of an individual character.
Achilles wrath is initiated by his sense of honor. Honor for the Greeks, and specifically heroes, as readers have seen, existed on different levels. First, arete: the pursuit of excellence. Second, nobility: on the personal level, men had to treat each other properly; personal regard and honor from one’s peers was essential to the proper functioning of society. Third, valor: obtained by a warrior for his accomplishments in battle. Fourth, and finally, the Greeks could obtain everlasting fame and glory for their accomplishments in life. The wrath of Achilles is based on each of these concepts.
Underlying the idea of honor is another Greek concept—strife, personified by the goddess Eris. For the Greeks, life was based on the idea of strife and turmoil. To try to avoid strife was to avoid life. A good life could be achieved by reconciling the factors that produced strife. However, war, nature, personality—everything—contained elements of strife that may not be completely reconcilable. This more elemental strife could lead to evil. Both types of strife are involved in Achilles’ anger.
In a most significant way, Achilles’ life begins with an attempt to avoid strife. His parents, the goddess Thetis and the mortal Peleus, invite all the gods to their wedding except Eris (strife). Eris, however, like the evil witch in fairy tales, attends anyway and tosses out the golden apple marked, “For the Fairest.” Thus, strife enters at the wedding of Achilles’ parents and sets in motion the events that will ultimately lead to the Trojan War.
On a more personal level, Achilles himself is an embodiment of stressful opposites. One parent is mortal; one a goddess. Consequently, he knows both mortality and immortality. He knows he must die, but he also has a sense of the eternal. He knows that if he avoids the war he can live a long life, but that if he fights, he will die young. He knows that glory and eternal fame can be his only through early death in war while long life can be secured only by giving up the ultimate glory a Greek seeks. At first, Achilles attempts to avoid the Trojan War by pretending to be a woman; but, as in a number of instances, his attempts to avoid an action lead directly to that action.
In the Iliad, Achilles’ initial anger is a direct result of an act that Achilles perceives to be an attack on his personal honor. Agamemnon takes Briseis from Achilles. In response, Achilles withdraws from the war, producing greater strife, both personally and within the larger context of the war. Achilles cannot reconcile his desire to fight honorably with his companions with his justifiable, but increasingly petulant, anger at Agamemnon. Moreover, Achilles’ withdrawal produces the real strife of war, as the Trojans, emboldened by the absence of Achilles, attack the Greeks and their ships with increasing ferocity and success.
As a result of his inner conflict, his alienation from his society, and his inability to resolve this conflict, Achilles sends his companion Patroklos into battle as an alter ego. Patroklos even wears the armor of Achilles so that the Trojans will believe that Achilles has returned to battle. Patroklos is killed, and the turmoil within Achilles is magnified. Achilles sent Patroklos into battle instead of going himself; now he bears responsibility for the death of his friend. Also, now the Trojans are so empowered that they appear poised to win the conflict with the Greeks.
At this point, Achilles resolves the strife that led to his initial wrath but also begins the even greater wrath that results in the death of Hektor and almost takes Achilles beyond the bounds of humanity. Achilles is torn by his own responsibilities in the death of Patroklos and his hatred of the Trojans, specifically Hektor, who actually killed Patroklos. In the last five books of the Iliad, this conflict is transformed into the superhuman rage that Achilles displays as a warrior. After killing Hektor, Achilles allows his rage to move beyond death to desecration as he mutilates, time and again, the corpse of Hektor. At this point, Achilles is on the threshold of complete alienation from human feelings. Only through the recognition of his own kinship with both the living and the dead is he able to finally resolve the conflict and strife that has motivated his rage.
Reconciliation ends the wrath of Achilles and makes him more than a warrior hero. Achilles’ anger occurs in two great waves. The first wave, his withdrawal from battle because of conflict with Agamemnon, ends when Achilles accepts Agamemnon’s offer and reaches agreement concerning Briseis. Achilles’ second wave of anger is over the death of Patroklos and ends when Achilles returns Hektor’s body to Priam.
In both these instances, Achilles’ wrath has alienated him from those around him. In the first case, he becomes alienated from the other Achaians, his companions in battle; in the second, from humanity in general. In each case, Achilles achieves a reconciliation that allows him to be reintegrated into both his the heroic community and the larger community of humanity. Even so, Achilles remains a hero who is not easily understood. He becomes accepted, and even admired, but never quite comprehendible in the way Hektor is. Through the process of reconciliation, Achilles becomes a memorable literary hero like Oedipus or Beowulf or Hamlet: heroic and noble, but still somehow apart from others, somehow different.
Through reconciliation, Achilles achieves a tragic dimension. If Achilles does not return to the battle, his anger would be nothing more than petulant selfishness. His return, and knowing that he will die in the war, makes him not only a hero but also a hero touched with tragedy. If Achilles does not return Hektor’s body to the distraught Priam, then his wrath concerning Patroklos and toward Hektor’s corpse would be nothing more than the rage of mindless vengeance. His kindness toward Priam, recognizing his own kinship with the dead and defeated, makes him not only a tragic hero but also an existential one.
The fact that Achilles does recognize his kinship with those he has killed is what raises the Iliad to the level of existential tragedy. This recognition of kinship by Achilles begins in Book XXII. Before he kills Lykaon, Achilles says, “Come friend, you too must die.” Most commentators have seen this scene as a sublime moment in the poem in which Achilles asserts the inevitability of death and suggests a kinship between Lykaon, Patroklos, himself, and all the other warriors who have died or will die in battle. This recognition of death is similar to the recognition by Meursault, in The Stranger, that his execution, his death, is the bond that connects him to all humanity. Like Meursault, Achilles is an estranged person, and his acceptance of the inevitability of death is his ultimate assertion of a common bond with all humanity.
This notion of accepting death reaches its zenith when Achilles returns the body of Hektor to Priam. During the last few books of the Iliad, Achilles becomes more and more aware of his own impending death. Even as he rages against Hektor’s corpse, he sees his own demise foreshadowed. At the funeral games he rejoins his fellow Achaians. And with Priam, he rejoins the circle of humanity.
That words such as alienation, existential, and tragedy can be used to describe the Iliad demonstrates the greatness of Homer’s achievement. The ideas that underlie the Iliad are the ideas that underlie all great literature. Interestingly, the first great hero of Western Literature is also the first modern hero of Western Literature.
