The Iliad by Homer, Essay Example

In The Iliad, Homer creates a new type of epic hero in the character Achilles. Achilles is deviant, breaks the rules, is rebellious by nature yet feels compassion for his enemies. The Iliad speaks about the true nature of war and how it brutalizes the physical appearance of man as well as their character and soul. I especially like how Homer is able to envision the characters true sense of mortal behaviour with resilience to the temptations of killing and threats. Homer focuses on the self-destruction that is created within the realms of war bringing men and women face to face with death. Through the use of mythical narratives, excursions and the emphasis on Greek gods, Homer is able to emphasize the essence of tragedy.

Homer uses Achilles to depict the origin of anger in the book. Two beautiful women were awarded as prizes of the war to Agamemnon the commander of the Greek army and the other to Achilles. The first lady who was awarded to Agamemnon is the daughter of a priest named Apollo who comes to Achilles offering a ransom in return for his help to rescue his daughter. The Iliad has great history of the beginning of the Great Wall of Troy hence one of the great Gods was enlisted to build the war. Poseidon wanted compensation for his duties and the Trojans did not want to pay thus the war started. This is a fine example of generosity gone bad. In those times people had many children and the poem/play speaks of Priam and Hekuba having 49 children. We do not see this in today’s society thus this is very interesting to read about the family values during those times and whether they were fiction. There were often sacrifices to the Gods for the good of the people such as infant sacrifices as seen by Hebuka sacrificing her newborn child for the sake of the safety of the city. I don’t believe in such human sacrifice but in those days the people had very shallow and closed mind and the beliefs in sacrifices to God’s were very strict.

I particularly like how the hero and everyone in the town was bound to protecting their honour above everything else in the world even ‘till death. What was ironic that men on the battlefield shared the belief that though they had to fight they did not have to participate in unnecessary cruelty on the battlefield. Fighting was for a cause rather than a means of personal cruelty and affliction to another human being. Fighting was a means of showing your honour to your family. Ensuring your honour in society was something that all good and noble men fought to accomplish. These character traits were very noble and I respect them because not many men of today’s society possess these solid traits. The hero fully understood his place in society and had to act accordingly with his mannerisms whilst in society. It was never deemed a disgrace for a warrior to withdraw from a fight that was impossible to conquer.

Men worked very hard for their social status as men do today but their status was acquired on the battlefield alone. That was honourable but in today’s society fighting is not seen as a good deed to acquiring social status rather a condemnation to a man’s good name. Agamemnon places his duties on Zeus and Destiny showing he is cowardly and not worthy of a good name in the community. Both Agamemnon and Achilles are on the verge of violence against each other and this shows that even a hero has fallacies of humanistic nature that are not always simple and good. “A hero always has two paths to follow: either he can choose an external force or he could make his own personal decisions.” (The Hero and Homeric Culture). A true hero constantly lives in fear of being disgraced by others actions. Instead of accepting his own reality self-evident of his own reality, Achilles was constantly attempting to conform to the reality of what the townspeople wanted him to be. The irony behind the play/book is that war was not a means to an end and was not a tool for destruction rather a tool for survival and establishment of honour. Achilles established a new principle of warriors through having discipline coupled with honour and compassion running through his veins. He managed to articulate self-sacrificing motives with some of the facets of fighting he displayed and some of the self-evident displays of generosity he gave from within. Other characters were not so kind and generous but they were typical angry warriors.

Achilles was a very angry man but he took control over his anger and did not let it beseech him nor control his behaviours. The Iliad is a personal struggle of trying to conform to the whims and fancies of society and trying to find personal fulfilment in the process. Heroism came with a high price. A hero was looked upon with high stakes and as one of superiority hence many sacrifices had to be made in order to maintain that social status much more than sacrifices than are often made today.

I especially like what the play/book stands for in terms of discipline, honour and self-control. The paradox teaches that in order to maintain your dignity you must make grave sacrifices and often lose part of yourself to conform to the ideas of others. But what is important to note with this phrase is to never lose sight of who you are in the process as it seems Achilles began to do. Perhaps that is where some of his treacherous anger stemmed from-an inner fight with himself.

References

The Hero and Homeric Culture (2009) Retrieved December 3, 2009 from, http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/The-Iliad-Critical-Essays-The-Hero-and-Homeric-Culture.id-26,pageNum-148.html