Day 8: Hector dies. DO NOT WANT

Assignment: The Iliad, Books 22-24

Summary: Sigh. And so it ends, heartbreakingly.

Book 22: And now the moment of truth. Hector goes out to meet Achilles and they fight starts. And then Hector just books it. He just starts running around and around Troy. Achilles chases him and they run around for a while. Then Athena, the bitch, tricks Hector into stopping and attacking Achilles. In Achilles’s armor. Achilles know the weak spots and unsurprisingly, strikes a killing blow. Hector begs to have his body returned to Troy and Achilles, sigh, vows to let his body be eaten by dogs and birds. Then he ties Hector’s body to a chariot and drags it through the dirt. Fuck Achilles.

Meanwhile, as Achilles defiles Hector’s body, Hector’s family watches and weeps.

Book 23: So Achilles gets back and still refuses to bathe until he buries Patroclus. But at least he now accepts food, the fucking child. So that night, Patroclus’s ghost visits Achilles and says, “Dude, bury me already. I can’t pass on until you do. Also, you’re starting to smell. I’m dead and I can smell you.” So Achilles finally gets around to having a funeral for his “beloved companion.” And then he has a series of funeral games. Like you do.

Book 24: This book breaks my heart. So Achilles is now completely insane, just dragging Hector’s body around Patroclus’s tomb. Apollo, being awesome and in competition with Zeus over who has the biggest crush on Hector, keeps Hector’s body from rotting during all this. Meanwhile, Iris is sent by Zeus to tell Priam to go ransom his son’s body back. Priam brings a pile of treasure to give Achilles, including, yes, tripods. In his begging, Priam reminds Achilles of his own father so he lets Priam take the body.

And then there is Hector’s funeral. His wife, mother, and Helen each give heart-rending speeches at the sight of his body. The city’s mourning lasts days, with a reprieve from battle, and then they light his funeral pyre. The Iliad ends with “Such was their burial of Hector, breaker of horses.”

Reaction: Tripods! As a prize at the funeral games: “let us put up a wager of a tripod”. And in Priam’s mound of treasure? “two shining tripods.” *Headdeask*

In Book 22 there’s a really gruesome, but pretty interesting, speech from Priam where he predicts that when Troy falls he will be killed. And then his own dogs will eat his body. Because he is old, and there is nothing dignified in an old man’s death. Glory is in a young man being taken down in battle.

Speaking of dogs, my dog, who ate pound of chocolate the yesterday and then shit in my parents’ bed, is better behaved than Achilles. When Apollo goes down to help preserve the bodies, he says, “Achilles, within whose breast there are no feelings of justice.” I loved Apollo after this speech.

There is a theme here of funerals. I know that being remembered for valor was the path to immortality. Which is fine and explains why Achilles chose to go a place he knew he was fated to die to fight instead of staying home and living a good life without fame. But proper respect for a fallen enemy is not to drag his body around behind your chariot. I forgot to mention this before, but Hector gave a speech a few books back where he said that a dead enemy would be stripped of his armor but the body would be returned to the Achaeans. He asked the Greeks to do the same. And, in fact, it was what happened to Patroclus. Achilles, on the other hand, is a selfish child. Instead of giving Patroclus his funeral rites, he goes out for revenge. Which certainly makes him feel better but does nothing for Patroclus. The dude has to come back as a ghost to remind Achilles about that. This to me says that Achilles’s returning to the war has nothing to do with Patroclus and everything to do with Achilles’s own pain. It’s not about a loved one who died but that “He’s gone and I’m mad SO EVERYONE MUST DIE!” God, I hate Achilles. He’s not even a good person to have on your side, since he’ll just abandon your dead body to go on a killing spree. Hector’s family, on the other hand, don’t seek to destroy Achilles immediately following on Hector’s death and instead seek to give him proper death rites. Priam risks himself, not in vengeance, but to follow tradition and ransom the body back. And EVEN THEN, everything is about Achilles’s pain. He is not moved by Priam himself, but by memory of his own dead father. You are a self-centered asshat, Achilles. You and Bella from fucking Twilight could have awesome conversation about how your self-destructive tendencies and rampant egocentrism cause nothing but pain for those around you. He can’t even be content to kill Hector and see Troy fall, he has to be a total fucking drama queen about it all and make everyone pay attention to him. Patroclus is dead but it’s all about how he won’t eat or bathe. THAT IS NOT HONORING YOUR FRIEND’S MEMORY, YOU UNMITIGATED ASSHOLE.

Sorry, that was supposed to be about the symbolism of the funerals. It got away from me a bit. Anyway, the two funerals serve as symbols of the differences between the Greeks and the Trojans. In fact, of the whole war. Patroclus’s ends with games and victories, like the war will for the Achaeans. The entire funeral of Hector, on the other hand, is filled with tragedy. The last line is incredibly significant, if the translation is anything close to correct. Which, knowing how good Lattimore was on the first line, is up for grabs. The last line could actually be “And then Hector of the shining helm rose from the dead, the world’s first zombie” for all I know. But the point is that Hector has been “Hector of the shining helm” for the entire story. Now he’s “breaker of horses” like all the Trojans. His death is the death of Troy.

Or I’m talking out my ass. It does kind of seem like everyone’s a breaker of horses in The Iliad.

And there ends The Iliad. How did it fair in repeat reading? Quite well, actually. It was not a chore, which is kind of how I remember trying to read six books for class. And the parts that I remembered held up even better than in my memory. Of course, towards the middle, it did start to seem repetitive, the last six books seem to have all the action. And, while I remember loving Hector, I don’t remember hating Achilles this much. I didn’t even get to see the fucker meet his fated death in this book, for all it was harped on. But all in all, I liked it more with the Lit Hum background in me.

Tomorrow I watch Troy. Ugh.