10 7 21 Iliad 2 - Lecture notes 4 PDF

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Dr. Laura Hatch...

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10/7/21 Iliad 2 What do you make of the mortal education of Achilles? Where do you see Achilles making progress? Is much progress as you would have hoped for? If not, why do you think Homer leaves where he does? Why does Homer make this deliberate choice to end the poem where he does? What is the shield of Achilles represented there? Why do you think that it’s so important to the story that Homer includes the description of civilization on the shield? Book 18 The Shield of Achilles ● Achilles has kept himself from the war. ● Hector is very committed to Troy, his family, and the gods, but they’re not fated to win. It’s just not going to happen. What do you make of Hector? How is he similar to Achilles in some ways, how is he different? ● Hector’s cruel death ● They definitely set up as “foil” of each other ● It’s hard to tell if there is a protagonist or antagonist in the text. It’s so old in the same way we use them to think about modern literature that feels like Hector is more of the protagonist of the story, we’re meant to feel for because he has these very stirring scenes that feel closer to our own situations. ● Not to say that Achilles doesn’t have a life, but he has yet the same kind of established household that Hector does. ● Homer depict where Hector runs around Troy is an interesting scene and fascinating instead of confronting Achilles head-on, he runs. ● The creatureliness in all of us comes through. We feel the mortality comes through suddenly at the moment. Is it worth dying for? ● The fear of life that kicks in Hector just starts running even though he wants to or is meant to, it really humanizes his character and it also shows us more in-depth the fierceness, the cruelty of Achilles. ● How terrifying Achilles really is to the Trojans and he’s kept himself out of the battle, all of this time, and thus this is our first time really seeing what Achilles is capable of and we get to see him live up to his name so to speak. ● Hector is much less driven but he still has pride in his honor. We have a very different moral sense of perhaps what we would do in the situation when we think about having a family that we also need to care for. He still has a deep sense of his own pride and worth as it’s connected to the extreme glory, but perhaps he’s not narcissistically driven by his pride as Achilles. ● Hector seems a lot connected with his people. He fights for them, they know that he’s sacrificing for them. When he dies, the entire city is mourning and weeping.

● The poem is very complicated and doesn’t know the way to untangle what motivates in terms of fate or agency, or how to pull them apart. ● Hector is fated to die against Achilles. What Homer is interested in showing us is what are the influences of getting him onto the battlefield. ● Athena has a lot to do with a very cruel deception or tricks that she plays on Hector when she takes the form of his brother which is heartbreaking. ● Hector confronts his death thinking that at first, he has his family, with him then realizes that he’s alone. ● The moment of weakness, where Hector wants to survive, but there’s no reasoning with Achilles. ● When Hector confronts Achilles he tries to strike a bargain like “Let’s be reasonable here.” ● “If one of us dies,” and Hector knows that it’s going to be him, “I promise I’ll give your body back to the Greeks if that’s what happens, please give my body back to the Trojans.” ● and Achilles says “Animals don’t make deals with human beings. We don’t negotiate with the likes of you.” ● Hector knows that his body is going to undergo some serious humiliation if it ever even will be returned to his family and that’s really terrifying to him. ● Achilles is not to be reasoned with, and this is a big part of the “wrath” of Achilles that this story opens up with, as the central feature of the poem. ● Hector is a lot more human than Achilles in the sense that he’s fully mortal whereas Achilles has a goddess mother Thetis. ● Even comes up at one point where Athena is asking Zeus what is the value of Hector’s life in comparison to Achilles where Achilles is half-divine shouldn’t that mean he has more value. ● Zeus really pushes back against her on that and says that Hector has always been devoted: “He [Hector] has always given us all the worship that we’ve been asked for and more. He is devoted to his town, people, kingdom. Don’t miss him because he is fully mortal.” ● Hector has much more of a support system behind him—his family is there, his town, the whole city of Troy is there whereas Achilles is much more isolated. He’s the leader of his city-state, a group of warriors who have been brought to Troy to fight this battle, but we never see him interact with them in a way that constitutes more familial relations or familiarity in their bonds. ● Achilles knows that the moment he steps out to fight for Patroclus, he knows that he’s chosen the side of the prophecy, that is, he will die in this war but live for glory. ● There’s the sense that Achilles feels like he has no project left in this world without his best friend.

How do you see similarities between Gilgamesh and the loss of Enkidu? ● The idea of feeling like you’ve lost your reason to live. ● Leaving behind civilization ● In the case of Achilles, it looks different. He’s always been in the same place, but there’s the symbolic, leaving behind civilization, where he lets his rage consume him to the point where he can’t empathize, he can’t relate to people anymore. ● Gilgamesh and Enkidu have the brotherhood, the bond that runs so deep even though they are not related through a direct genetic relationship, they are brothers. ● Achilles is very affected by a death. It changes what he lives for and his realization of what he had to live for. The person who got him, who understood, and saw him was gone. ● The obsessive quest needed to be put right in the loss. ● There is a scene of Thetis coming and Achilles being cradled by her as he weeps. She knows that this is the end for him, if he chooses this, he cannot escape his death. ● Thetis goes to have the armor made for Achilles. Why do you think Achilles receives this shield? Homer could have had they just go up to [Profestus], could have made a giant, bronze shield and they could have described it as the biggest, best material in a simple adornment that they’ve ever had, give it to the greatest warrior of the all-time. Instead, we get a page after page description of what’s on the shield. Why would Homer could include the really long description of the details on Achilles’ shield? ● The text is clearly calling our attention to the shield as an object of importance. It wants us to contemplate what’s on it, and this is not a practical detail of how the battle is won. Instead, we are getting this moment where art is really calling out to us to pay attention to it in a literally terms called “ekphrasis” which is wherein poetry or in prose, where we use language to describe art—not what we’ve seen with our eyes and process visually, but we are instead receiving a written description of what is on this piece of art. ● We have a representation of gods, the zodiac, the scenes of the city and war and peace, the agricultural scenes surrounding it. The ocean bounds at the edge of the shield. ● It’s more of emotional and protective importance. This is a very symbolic shield and the symbolism could have gone a lot of different ways. Is it not depicting the great Greek army, it is something that abstracts away and it is talking about the human condition than it is about any individual great hero, army, or city-state. ● The idea is that Achilles chose glory over life and he has at the heart, the core of the shield is the nexus of generation and creation. We’re here with the earth, the sea, the sun, the moon, and the star. It represents the structure of the universe, the cosmos, the idea that this is a big picture, and how does the human condition fits inside of this. We’re just a tiny drop inside of the universe, and yet rather than depicting all of the divine cosmic

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structuring of the universe across the shield, that’s what’s at the center, it’s the focus but it’s also the smallest thing. What takes precedence is depicting the human condition in terms of these interesting cycles, the city that’s the peace, the city that is at the war. How encompassing it was of the human conditions the aspects of humanity. The way of tethering Achilles is that any attempt to tether him back to what makes him human as he is losing himself to this rage, to this grief. It makes a lot of sense that why Homer would have this ongoing, neverending cycle of a city at peace, a city at a war. This idea is that humanity is always striving after peace, but we only know peace because we know conflict, how they inform each other. We’re inside this poem, particularly inside of a tragic universe where they’re seeking an end to the cycles, but it never seems to be possible.

They could have constructed the shield in a way that we basically have the rest of the shield up in the bound being city depicted at peace and at the bottom, city depicted at war. Why do you think there are the scenes of pastoral events, vintage—creating wine, therefore, harvesting grapes— reaping, ploughing first the soil, in order to plant seeds, and then reaping a corps to feed community? ● The daily interactions and actions that we have thus everything that’s going on in between the two big, two halves of the same coin, however, what are the daily actions that they’re doing create a life. Not just a life that is liveable but a life that’s worth living? What are the actions that we participate individually as a community, in order to create a space where we can have projects, where we can understand ourselves in relationship to each other? (Assigned in Gilgamesh) ● The imagery of ploughing of birth, of reaping—death. Life and death, the cycles that are circling around the seemingly binary of peace and war. ● The representation of growth that Achilles still needs to go through. There are elements of the human condition of life that he has not experienced and has not reached maturity with. ● We don’t just live in a vacuum and we participate in these activities communally. ● The laws of agriculture, seasons, the laws that we put in place when everything is constantly changing. ● From a trusted perspective, how these images of ploughing and reaping, of dancing, of raising cattle and sheep, also signifying what are the daily interactions we participate in, help us create trust in society, in the rhythms and the cadences of the rituals and traditions that we have. ● If we put ourselves into the shoes of an ancient Greek listener to this poem, sheep shearing festivals or living lives by agricultural rhythms represent all the way across the shield, speak a lot to the daily rhythms of life.

● This shield speaks to what could it take to create a society, it’s not about Greeks or Troy, it’s about life in general and in the ongoing cycle of peace, war of conflict, and resolution, how do we create a society where we can interact with each other with trust, as we continue to manage the risks that are always cropping up. ● In some ways, it’s also the conflict that characterizes the Greek tragic universe, in terms of the “dissoi logo”—the idea of doublespeak, that there are at least two perspectives on anyone, idea or concept, we’re constantly moving or renegotiating our way around these critical components of the human condition. ● It’s an indirect way to talk about Achilles’s character and pointing to the emotional and moral growth that we would hope to see in him. ● That’s what makes Book 22 and Book 24 so important. As we get to sit with Achilles for a moment and try to understand him better. ● The Greeks really wanted Helen, it’s more about protecting Paris’ decision—protecting the honor of Troy with Paris as a Prince of Troy. ● The consequences are going to be deadly. ● Apollo has been taking close care and has been paying a lot of attention to Hector. He’s been helping him, escape, and survive elements such as he’s been helping Hector’s knees just to keep going as he’s running trying to outrun Achilles. ● The scale is interesting, of course, it tips in the favor of Achilles thus we know that Hector is fated to die and how immediately the narrator tells us Phoebus Apollo abandoned him, and then Athena springs up next to Achilles. What do you make of abandonment of Hector? What does it do to your understanding of his death that the divine protection that he had the way of Athena’s vitriolic hatred for Hector? How does that affect the way that you understand his mortality, the way that Athena deceives him? ● Hector is now just suddenly gone like a finger snapped or a light switch flipped—it’s over. ● Now Athena, the goddess of creativity, cleverness, wisdom, and strategy in battle, immediately comes to the side of Achilles. It’s as one god exits the stage, the other one immediately runs on. ● There’s nothing left that Hector can do. He is incredibly vulnerable. He doesn’t know that Apollo is gone, he also can’t see Athena. He doesn’t know that Athena is strengthening Achilles. ● Its part of the tragedy of this universe that Homer is placing inside of that gods can take forms—they can be present, invisible, or not there at all and they do not know. ● The idea that Hector’s come upon that is incredibly vulnerable, ready to be taken down, and he has no clue. He’s facing the uncertainty of death. ● Hector knows that he is going to die at this point. We know that that’s his fate. He doesn’t know the scales of tip like this necessarily, but we know that he will die against Achilles.

● The deception of Athena is so tragic, Hector thinks at first though, he is out in front of the city’s gates facing the burning, blazing star of the Greek army, Achilles and he thinks he is doing this alone, and suddenly by his side is his sibling—the language of this is so heartbreaking. ● Athena is creating false hope, even though he knows that he’s probably going to die, he thought that he could die together with his family, and now is this final, not only is he going to die physically but psychologically, she has to wound him deeply—it’s not enough to just kill him physically. ● It reveals how little agency there can be in the scenes. When Achilles throws his spear, Hector thinks now he has a chance because he thinks Achilles is unarmed—little does he know that the spear shows up again on his hands. ● It’s as Athena is trying to teach Hector a lesson. It’s not clear because she doesn’t come out and reveal herself to him and tell him what she wanted to show him. Perhaps that’s the point that it’s never really clear what the lessons are of the gods because of how manipulative they are, how much they disguise themselves, how much motivations are hidden from mortals. ● They talked last time about how we can have etiological myths that try to explain where things come from. We can also have myths that try to point to how it is that we encounter and interpret the inexplicable. ● How this poem expresses an ancient Greek perspective on the universe, whether or not they believe that this is how gods operate, or everybody has the same unified vision of what the divine is like, as it shows up in this particular representation. How does the poem speak, though, more broadly, perhaps to an ancient Greek understanding of the uncertainty of the universe and giving a voice to it, a representation to what it feels like to not understand why our lives turn out the way it is to through these myths, stories. ● We’re in incredibly volatile situations whenever the gods are involved and they’re almost constantly involved which leaves very little rest and peace for these characters. ● Hector pleads to have his body be given back so that he can have a burial and the answer that Achilles gives is incredibly inhumane where he says “‘don’t supplicate me by knees.’ Don’t grab me. Don’t touch me. Don’t try to appeal to anything about our humanity. ● He can’t defend himself he is dead, and then on top of that, they pierced his feet, ankles, run ropes through them and drag the body behind the chariot. At this point, what do you make of Achilles’ rage? If it really were a tip for that about Patroclus’ body, then they would have left the body on the battlefield, and every time the Trojans came to get it, they would make it difficult to retrieve. Why do you think Achilles is driven to do so much more to the body?

● Patroclus’ death was so personal to him. He’s not thinking rationally. He’s definitely not thinking compassionately to give the body back. He’s not thinking, eye for an eye, so to speak, of “Well, I’ll just withhold the body or make it hard for them to get to it.” ● Achilles wants to mock, mocking Hector’s death, and the Trojans. This feeling is a way of coping. ● As we’ve all experienced, if we can’t sleep, especially in a couple of nights in a row, it really messes with us. It feels like for Achilles, the only way we learned that he can get any sleep, the only way he seems to cope, is by taking the Chariot out and taking it around more laps, by abusing Hector, by torturing him more and more. He has a perverse coping mechanism. ● Achilles is sending a message to Troy. He’s trying to humiliate them, to punish them psychologically as much as he’s trying to torture the single body. ● The idea of making this right by Patroclus by taking it further. Sending a message to Troy but also trying, perhaps to send a message to Patroclus. ● We’ve learned, though, that the body is being protected by the gods. They feel sympathy for who Hector was as a moral in his life that they’re willing to give it a divine coding, thus the body is protected as being dragged, and we learn that eventually, Zeus says “this is enough. Achilles’ has got to knock it off.” ● The gods tell him he’s got to give the body back, this has gone too far, even to the gods this seems it’s gone too far, and they tell Thetis, Achilles’ mother, “you need to go up and tell him that we’re sending ‘Hermes’, the messenger God; god of boundaries. We’re going to send her to guide Priam to collect the body and he is going to give the body back, there is no choice.” ● Hermes is not only a god of messages, but he is also a god of boundaries, the god of thresholds. A guide associated with crossing into new spaces. ● The ancient Greeks believed that are part of the myth system was that when the person died, Hermes guide the soul to the underworld making or helping them transition from the world of the living to the world of the dead, leaving them at the shores of the underworld. Given that knowledge that Hermes is a god of boundaries, and they send a Hermes to be the god who guides Priam, what are the boundaries you think that Achilles and Priam are crossing (figuratively or literally) in this final scene? They could’ve sent Iris who is a messenger Goddess, but they send Hermes, which signifies to us the reader to consider the idea of boundaries and thresholds that are being crossed. What are some thresholds you feel that Achilles has to encounter and cross when he meets Hector’s father, Priam? What stood out about the experience they had together? How would you characterize perhaps emotionally, the meeting of Achilles and Hector’s father, Priam? ● There’s the boundary of Hector’s body. It’s gone too far. They’ve got to pull this back. Priam is desperately pleading to have the body back.

● We’ve seen they are crossing boundaries and how they’ve perceived the other, they are having to acknowledge that the other is human. ● Violence vs. any kind of rationally, compassion ● Both of them encompass griefs especially Achilles, so enveloped in the isolating grief. He feels that he’s the only one experiencing this and then has to confront the fact that his actions have caused suffering for someone else. ● It’s a wonderful image, as in Venn Diagram, that they’re now literally sharing the space to no man’s land inside of Achilles, his tent, and has become a makeshift sanctuary for the two of them to make themselves vulnerable to one another. ● When Priam gets there, he and Achilles are crossing the boundaries. ● As Achilles is watching, he’s ...