A Review of ‘The Song of Achilles’ by Madeline Miller
Last summer, after being bombarded with recommendations by a lot of bookstagrammers, I picked up ‘Circe’ by Madeline Miller and thoroughly enjoyed reading this retelling of Odysseus’s journey through the eyes of Circe the witch. Since then, I have been on the lookout for ‘The Song of Achilles’ in my local libraries.
Like ‘Circe’, this book also is a first person narrative of a famous Greek Epic. While ‘Circe’ brings us the story of its titular character set around the time of Odysseus’s journey back home from the Trojan war, ‘The Song of Achilles’ refocuses the story of the Trojan War and its hero Achilles (Aristos Achaion / Best of the Greeks) and brings out a more softer, more human side to this rage fueled divine hero. Patroclus his lover and life long companion is a personification of this human side of Achilles.
Although our story begins with the first time Patroclus sees Achilles at the games hosted by his father, I think the real foundations for what are going to come in the future are laid in the halls of Tyndareus’s citadel. Tyndareus is the king of Sparta and the foster-father to Helen, rumored to be one of the most beautiful women of her generation. As she comes of a marriageable age, Helen’s beauty and her father’s rich lands of Sparta attract a lot of suitors, each more distinguished than the other and eyeing the prize on the dais and the one to come in the future after Tyndareus’s death. Her suitors, both young and old, flock to the halls of her father, bringing with them a host of their armies and rich gifts for Tyndareus. Tyndareus accepts all of these gifts as is custom but is perplexed as to who he should give his daughter’s hand in marriage to because making a choice would inevitably upset everybody else not chosen and would lead to the losers declaring war on the suitor and on Sparta. Odysseus comes up with the clever plan of letting Helen choose her husband and, before the choice is made, makes all the kings present in the assembly swear to the gods that they will defend Helen’s suitor in case one of the losers ever decides to declare war on him or steal Helen. To everyone’s surprise, Helen chooses to marry Menelaus, Agamemnon’s brother.
Many years later, while Achilles and Patroclus are apprenticing under the centaur Chiron, Helen is taken by Paris, a prince of Troy. Under the guise of restoring his brother’s honor and his stolen wife, Agamemnon decides to call upon all the heroes of Greece to come together and invade the Anatolian kingdom of Troy with its impregnable walls and attain unending glory and riches for themselves. This task proves to be much more difficult than they imagined because not only are the walls of Troy built by the god Apollo himself, but this war has the gods taking sides and pulling the strings, making it difficult for the other side to win, thereby stretching this war for almost a decade. Achilles, after a lot of deliberation, joins the Greeks in their fight, chasing glory and eternal fame despite knowing that the Fates have ordained him to never return alive from Troy.
I dare say that while this book is called ‘The Song of Achilles’, the bard who sings this song is Patroclus and hence the real hero of the story. While the original epic paints Achilles as a weapon forged by the Gods bereft of any emotion, Patroclus in this book brings out a more human side to Achilles. This contrast between the world’s perceptions of Achilles and Patroclus’s is very evident towards the end of the book when after Achilles’s death, the Greek army under Agamemnon builds Achilles’s mausoleum and adorns with all of his heroic deeds. Patroclus’s soul laments that Achilles legacy is now set stone and painted over with blood. To quote from the book, ‘Look at how he will be remembered now. Killing Hector, killing Troilus. For things he did cruelly in Grief….. Returning Hector’s body to Priam… His skill with the lyre. His beautiful voice. The girls. He took (them) so that they would not suffer at the another king’s hands.’
In conclusion, like its successor the author does call bring out the stark differences between divinity and humanity. These differences stand out prominently during the lamenting of Patroclus’s soul when he says ‘Perhaps such things pass for virtue among the gods. but how is there glory in taking a life. We die so easily.’ and in Neoptolemus (Achilles’s son also known as Pyrrhus for his red hair) death at the hands of Agamemnon’s son caused by his own hubris of being the new Aristos Achaion and taking what he wants for himself like the gods sitting on Olympus would do.
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