Achilles wip (what do you mean by ‘drawing a death scene is not a good coping mechanism’)
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Achilles wip (what do you mean by ‘drawing a death scene is not a good coping mechanism’)
ARTEMIS: lady of the wild things, deep forests, animals and wild hunt. Goddess of the moon and guardian of the young girls and women.
It’s called The Song of Achilles because the Iliad, the most famous text about Achilles, opens with the infamous line
“Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles”
and that’s how it’s all presented, the rage of Achilles. It’s not his song, it’s a song about his actions and their context within the war and the larger struggle between mankind and fate. There is no song about Achilles himself, no infamous narrative that explores the identity and the humanity of the so-called Best of the Greeks. It’s really dehumanizing, and that’s quite possibly by design, it’s part of the story’s message.
So Miller reframes the story, rephrases the song so that it really is about Achilles. It’s a humanization of one of the most infamous fictional characters ever, it breathes life and soul into Achilles, himself a symbol of the tragedy of a soul broken by insitituonal and personal forces, and makes him more than a symbol, it makes him a person.
But nothing can be about Achilles without also being about Patroclus, because even in the Iliad it is clear that only he can see and reach Achilles’s softer, human side. So Patroclus tells the story, sings us the song of Achilles, of the story of the soul of the man, not simply the man who butchered Troy.
One of Patroclus’s biggest conflicts in the story is the dehumanization of Achilles itself, that history won’t remember him as the boy who loved to play the lyre and eat figs, but as Aristos Achaeon. It breaks Patroclus’s heart and it breaks the reader’s heart, and much of the story is based around Patroclus trying to prevent that from happening.
The song of Achilles is supposed to be Patroclus’s vanguard against the dehumanization of history. On a broader scale, it’s a testament to the necessity of love, compassion, and empathy when looking at any “historical” event, and that the human soul is a precious thing in and of itself and deserves to be protected and cherished, and the world is left a better place when it is. (I could also go into the emphasis on the importance of rejecting repressive cultural, social, and institutional pressures and living life for oneself and not just one’s place in the world, but I’m emotional enough as it is.) That’s why I think it’s such an important text related to the Iliad and it deserves the same respect as the thousands of its other retellings.
Achilles: I’m the aristos archaeion. I’m beautiful and strong and honoured and my own person. My sexuality doesn’t define me
Also Achilles, shoving Agamemnon out of his way to get some coffee: move I’m gay
“The truth is, we live like bats, labor like beasts, and die like worms.”
- Margaret Cavendish
A long winded analysis of femininity in Madeline Miller’s Circe:
Circe is a goddess. And she is a witch. And a mother and a daughter and a sister and a lover. But she is also, and most importantly, a woman. And that is the most striking thing about Miller’s characterization. Her womanhood is neither an insignificant piece of her character nor the only part that matters. She is not a great character despite being a woman nor is she a great character merely because she is a woman. She is a well-rounded (and well-written) character in her own right with femininity intricately woven through each one of her steps and stumbles and never thrown in your face as a show of diversity, as false proof of equality. She has both vivid strengths and fierce flaws and neither are written to appeal to the male gaze. Her faults are not attached solely to her femininity, but are instead fleshed out and complex and difficult to understand. They sneak up on us like a shadow, looming in the back of the reader’s mind, always present but never truly seen. Glimpsed through a window clouded with fog. But Miller never lets us evade the truth, forget the fact that existing as a woman is hard. There is no easy way out. Be too strong and too independent and the world will prove to you how weak you are. Have too many flaws, make too many mistakes and they will laugh in your face to say we told you so.
There is also, I think, this aspect of surviving as a woman in a world that would wish nothing more than to see you bleeding on the ground. Pasiphaë highlights the destructiveness of playing the games of men, the ones intended to take a woman’s voice and feed it to the wolves before letting it be heard. Circe refuses to play along, and ends up under the boots of men anyways. We are consistently reminded that there is no escape from the whims and wishes and wars of men. The men in Circe’s story are self-absorbed and dismissive and cruel, and even the half-decent ones are shaded grey by most of her narrative. Miller knows that existing as a woman means there can be no redundancy, the price will always be too steep. Because redundant means not needed and not needed is as good as dead. You must be beautiful and useful and obedient and silent, and for many of us that story becomes exhausting. We survive in spite of men, and the resulting resentment turns men into pigs.
Reading Circe was a complicated experience for me. The prose, the plot, the characterizations, they were each of them stunning, and I think everyone should read this work of art. But it also left me with a profound sense of grief. I felt absolutely gutted by the end. This was not the grief of TSOA, that familiar, mournful empathy. This was somehow deeper, like all those things I already knew had been reinforced with a stark reality that felt … brutal. Thousands of years after the fact, hundreds of translations later, and Circe is the witch in Odysseus’ story. Medusa’s head is proof of Perseus’ bravery. Helen is the most hated woman in Greece for a war waged in her name by men. Women are beaten and raped and bought and sold and murdered in story after story written by men to be read and used by men to prove the inferiority of our humanity. And this is why Miller’s emphatic declaration of Circe’s womanhood is both beautiful and painful at once. Even as we read line after line of strength and resilience and unapologetic womanliness, we can’t escape the knowledge that it will be used against her, that it has been used against her. That it has been used against us.
Circe is more than a woman and that is crucial to the telling of her story, but the fact that she is irreplaceable as a woman cannot be ignored. It matters, to the story and to the readers. To readers like me, who know that her narrative is filled to the brim with pieces of my own, with pieces of my mother’s and sister’s and every woman’s, everywhere. To exist as a woman is a singular experience, and Madeline Miller has captured it expertly in these pages. Cavendish‘s words have never felt more applicable than to this story of a woman who lives like a bat and labors like a beast, but in the end, refuses to die like a worm.
Achilles: Agamemnon, pass my sword.
Agamemnon: What’s the magic word?
Achilles: Or else.
– The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
This scene is, in my humble opinion, one of if not the best scene in TSOA. The emotions that fill me when I read it never change and never lessen. Absolutely stunning storytelling
Kind of reeling at how TSOA just completely disregarded achilles’ most well known character trait.
In the book he’s killed by an arrow to the chest and they never once mention the whole ‘Achilles Heel’ thing. To be fair I completely forgot about it too, and I’m honestly kind of glad she left it out.
The book makes an appropriately big deal about how amazing Achilles is in battle, and in most retellings, it’s because nothing but a heel shot can kill him, but in TSOA, it’s just because he’s that great of a warrior, and it makes his death much more impactful, imo. He wasnt surviving because of some kind of supernatural assistance, and he wasn’t killed by it either (I mean yeah Apollo helped Paris but that’s just cause Paris is useless, an actual skilled bowman probably could’ve done the same). It drives home how mortal Achilles is and makes the whole prophecy about his death seem way more real. Idk that’s just my thoughts.
Also not to mention that I also believe that she didn’t include his heel thing because it isn’t nessecary to the story. This isn’t an epic, the point is not to make Achilles look like a hero. This is a love story, and a tragedy about a boy who thought he was a god and got proven horrendously wrong.
Patroclus: What would you have done?
Achilles: I don't know. No one has ever tried taking something away from me.
Achilles: I would be angry.
Me:
Achilles didn’t shake the sea floor with his sobs, share a bed with a corpse, and willingly submit himself for death out of grief and rage over Patroclus’s loss just for you bitches to reduce the infamous Rage of Achilles to the Power of Friendship
LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE AT THE BACK
So, I read the Iliad, and there is an entire chapter where the greek heroes rally together to protect Patroclus' body from being dragged away-
Idk if it was just my translation but it was HEARTBREAKING. The second that any one of the Greeks finds out Patroclus is dead they just... immediately burst into tears??? Antilochos just stands there stunned when Menelaus tells him to get Achilles bc he is so immediately crushed, and everyone comes from their battles to stand over his body fighting off the Trojans weeping for the loss of their kindest and most gentle friend.
Imagine how loved he was??? How famously kind and friendly to every Greek in the camp for everyone to be devastated like that, for Ajax and Menelaus to be fighting tooth and nail while weeping because they can't stand the thought of their friend not receiving a proper burial.
And it's so striking when I read that and they don't just say they want his body for a proper burial, they want his body to give him back to Achilles. They know he will be the most heartbroken and he needs to see Patroclus one last time, even though they're angry at him for abandoning the battle, even if they think he's selfish, they know that Patroclus and Achilles should never be separated.
okay not going to lie op .... literally teared up reading this
A Patrochilles Playlist
made up of follower recommended songs
Light - Sleeping at Last *
Little Talks - Of Monsters and Men *
You Said You’d Grow Old With Me - Michael Schulte
Dynasty - MIIA
King and Lionheart - Of Monsters and Men
Skin - RagnBone Man
Tomorrow - Daughter
You - Keaton Henson *
Speak to Me - Amy Lee
Kingston - Faye Webster
Turning Page - Sleeping At Last
Big Eyes - Matt Corby
Unsteady - X Ambassadors
Immortal - MARINA
Better Love - Hozier
Foreigner’s God - Hozier
Young and Beautiful - Lana del Rey *
Let Me Follow - Son Lux
BITE - Troye Sivan *
Walking in the Wind - One Direction
Young God - Halsey *
No One’s Here to Sleep - Bastille
Far Too Young to Die - Panic! At The Disco
Tonight - ZAYN
To Binge - Gorillas
Your Love Could Start A War - The Unlikely Candidates
To Be Human - Sie (feat. Labrinth) *
Bleeding Out - Imagine Dragons
Lay Me Down - Sam Smith
If I Ain’t Got You - James Bay
lovely (with Khalid) - Billie Eilish
I Will Follow You Into the Dark - Death Cab for Cutie *
Ghost That We Knew - Mumford and Sons
Not About Angels - Birdy
Youth - Daughter *
* song was recommended more than once
I tried to include everyone’s individual song recommendations and at least two or three songs from those who sent in playlists. I listened to every song on the list and tried to organize so that it has a good flow of sound and mix of emotions. Hope you like it!
Here’s a link to the Spotify version of this playlist:
https://open.spotify.com/user/ybba67/playlist/4ZVPVpPeIeuSyRiujXlrkg?si=Q5by5kqaQLWH8rCNbmB2EA
And here’s a link to my personal TSOA playlist:
https://open.spotify.com/user/ybba67/playlist/5uHhzWRxFxLTvTXwPsrBsy?si=ghCJIg5jT8-H3QqDaU7nsg
If there’s a song that I missed or if anyone thinks of any more, just leave a comment and I’ll add it when I can
x
alright lads i’m listening to this playlist right now and let me tell you it SLAPS
i’m so proud of you guys for these recommendations, every song is perfect and i’m crying
the song of achilles — madeline miller
imagine being like SUPER rich, being like whoa dude i can totally end poverty, then buying a yacht
Ill take one, keep the change.
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