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Achilles: “He was 5, 6 when her (mother? or spirit???) voice whispered on his skin, Do you hear me? I am still with you for a time when you call” and then she was a “faint far-off echo to his senses, an underwater humming”. He grieved, but in silence so as not to let others know. “Somewhere in the depths of his sleep his spirit made a crossing and not come back or had been snatched up and transformed.” “He had entered the rough world of men, where a man’s acts follow him wherever he goes in the form of story.” “…
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Athena calms Achilles down. She told him that he can criticize agamlmnon all he wants but don’t kill him. Agamlnon speaks to Achilles in an angry wa an even threatens hto take brise is away from him. Vestor appeals to both Agamlmnon and Achilles by complimenting tem but also by reasoning with them. He reminds Achilles that agamlmnon is the king and he reminds agomlmnn that Achilles is available as an…
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Analyse the effectiveness of the tactics used by both sides in the Trojan War. ____________________________________________________________…
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Ransom questions the classical interpretation of the hero as a powerful warrior, and instead subverts this understanding by presenting those individuals as anti-heroes. Achilles, the hero of the Iliad and the quintessential embodiment of power and the “warrior spirit”, is presented by Malouf “hunker[ing] down… shoulders hunched” in the opening of the text. From the outset the reader is presented with a weak anti-hero so troubled he is searching for “the voice of his mother”. Hardly an impenetrable hero, he is “darkly divided”. Heracles, a figure from Priam’s early history, too is a hero. “The whole terrible machinery of the man” is just “rank meatiness” unable to understand Hesione, Priam’s sister, and her compassion in trying to rescue her brother destined for a life of slavery. Such love is beyond his realm of understanding, he “expected [Hesione] to choose some gaudy trinket”. Malouf portrays Heracles as “foolish” and a “brute”. Neoptolemus, Achilles’ son and avenger, is like his father a “youthful hero”. He goes to Troy’s palace to kill king Priam in the final section of novel where Malouf travels out of the immediate time frame. In what is supposed to be a triumphant and heroic deed turns awry when Neoptolemus botches the killing of Priam, he is left feeling “heartsickness, animal sadness, despondency”. Neoptolemus, who was supposed to triumphantly avenge his fathers death instead butchers…
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To begin the book, Strauss introduces Helen of Troy. Helen was the wife of King Menelaus and had attracted the attention of the Prince Priam of Troy. Strauss introduces that the reason that Helen left Sparta could have been for two reasons: one idea was that Menelaus was oppressive and Paris was a good looking prince, while the other idea that Strauss explores is that Anatolian women had more power than Greek women. Paris probably thought that the Greeks would not attempt to bring Helen back, but agamemnon was able to convince them of this risky war in order to profit from the wealth that Troy contained, “Helen was not the cause of the war but merely the occasion of the war. By seducing a Greek princess, Troy had interfered in the politics of the Greek kingdom and humiliated a powerful man” (Strauss p 28).…
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His message is well received. Meanwhile, Thersites, a man- and commoner- despised by all, advises the army to return home and is struck down by Odysseus to the pleasure of the gathered crowd. Here, the respect and honor that Odysseus has achieved lends sufficient weight to his argument that his opponent, without equivalent status, is barely allowed to retort. The honor and glory an individual has gained increase the respect and influence he commands as well. Honor and glory were important to the ancient Greeks because social status was not fixed. Indeed, in the eyes of the Greeks “social status correlates closely with access to power, but does not fully determine it.” Positions of power were not simply inherited, and through honorable and respected actions a person could elevate their social position significantly. This mobility in Greek culture inspires a cooperative attitude between the local leaders and the people following them. The leaders require the voluntary cooperation of the people under them, and only achieve that with respect and honor. This quality allows Achilles to disobey Agamemnon and refuse to fight when Agamemnon dishonors him by taking his prize. Many of the strategic decisions for the…
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* “What he feels in himself as a perfect order o f body, heart, occasion, is the enactment, under the stars, in the very breath of the gods, of the true Achilles, the one he has come all this way to find.”…
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Achilles is a character from one of my favorite books by Homer, The Iliad and the Odyssey. He has no care for the authority of King Agamemnon. Achilles says, “You shameless, cunning man! How is any Greek willing to obey you? I did not come here because the Trojans had injured me. They have never bothered my…
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15. The other gods decide that the [Athenians’s] lives depend more on Athena than on Poseidon.…
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Not long after the opening scene of the epic, Achilles is seen trying to show Agamemnon how wrong it is that he would think to steal Achilles’s girl, and uses the “ethos” argument to prove it. He tells him, “I don’t have any quarrel with the Trojans, they didn’t do anything to me to make me come over here and fight . . . It’s…
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Paris is another Trojan prince that lives his life similar to Hektor’s. However, Paris seems to take the war lightly. On a visit, Hektor inspires Paris to join the ranks in the…
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Achilles: I knew that I was going to be remembered forever, because that was my…
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#1. Discuss the character of Achilles in Homer’s Iliad. What is the nature of the existential crisis in which he finds himself, and why is his relationship to both gods and the other Greek warriors so unusual? What realization does he arrive at during his period of withdrawal from the battlefield? What does it mean to say that he is probably the first true individual as well as the first “problem character,” in Western literature? Finally, discuss the reader’s response to his behavior. In what ways does Achilles repel our human sympathies? In what ways does he maintain or regain them? In this context you will certainly want to discuss his behavior toward Hector as well as his final meeting with Priam.…
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Achilles was a man of anger and with this anger he dishonored Agamemnon, the commander of the Achaean forces. This forced Achilles to withdraw from the battle. After Agamemnon took Chrysies the daughter of a priest of Apollo, Achilles saw a way of returning to his rein in the war. He followed Agamemnon instruction in protecting the prophet with the key to saving Greece from the plague that was forced upon them in order to free Chrysies. At the same time sweltering with wrath Achilles prayed to Thetis to convince Zeus to the Trojans gain ground in the war. He then would regain is honor in the Trojan War, the honor that he lost when dishonoring Agamemnon. After saving Greece from the plague Achilles refused to fight the war. He believed that they were fighting for the wrong purpose.…
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* The beginning of Achilles’ wrath begins when he becomes infuriated by the way Agamemnon has publicly humiliated and dishonored him. Achilles feels that he is a greater warrior than Agamemnon and deserves more than he is rewarded after battles because he shows more honor and bravery than any other man. After being publicly humiliated and dishonored, Achilles is pushed to the edge of anger and announces, “So must I be called out every order you may happen to give me. Tell other men to do these things, but give me no more commands, since I for my part have no intention to obey you. And put away in your thoughts this other thing I tell you. With my hands I will not fight for the girl’s sake, neither with you nor any other man, since you take her who gave her.” Achilles leaving with his soldiers is dishonorable because he must fight to fulfill his fate and he cannot gain any glory by not fighting. Achilles inhibits his destiny to leave after he is humiliated by Agamemnon and striped of his concubine Briseis. If Achilles does not fight in Troy, he will not be able to fulfill his destiny of bringing honor and having his name live on forever. This state of wrath he feels inside almost destroys his path to destiny by bringing him away from battle.…
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