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Honor And Shame In The Iliad

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In Greek culture honor and shame is everything to them. With honor brings great joy, but with shame disgrace us brought upon the person and their family. The Iliad opens up with this line, “Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians” (75). This summarizes the whole story of the Iliad, that Achilleus will becomes greatly angered which will bring horrible atrocities upon the Achaians. Achilleus, who considers himself a greater fighter than Agamemnon, does not believe that he should be taking orders from Agamemnon, and becomes angered when Agamemnon takes his prize, Brisies when he has to give up his prize, Criseis. Achilleus asks Agamemnon how “Anyone of the Achaians readily obey you” (79) and looses his temper. Achilleus becomes so enraged that he turns on his …show more content…

Another aspect that hinders the Achaians is that Achilleus, their best fighter, refuses to fight. With this, the Achaians go into a sort go loosing slump, as the Trojans gain speed and more success. In book two, Zeus’, in order to fulfill Achilleus’ request, sends a treacherous dream to Agamemnon that says, “He might take the wide-eyed city of the Trojans” (92). In the dream Nestor tells Agamemnon that if he attacks Troy immediately at full strength, then it will fall. But, this omen that Zeus sends is a false one, as he sends a message to Troy about the Achaians’ plan, so that the Trojans can defeat them. Instead of fighting the two sides duel, but the duel ends inconclusive. In book eight, Zeus forbids the gods from participating in the war. This ban on intervention allows Zeus to direct the war against the Greeks as he promised the Achilleus. To accomplish this, he sends lighting and thunder to scare the Achaians, who then flee from the Trojans. With the help of Zeus, the Trojans have a lot of success in battle in book

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(page 352, line 59)” Infact he repeats this statement multiple times whenever discussing this matter. He was so affected by being treated like a lower class, he literally abandoned his duty as a soldier. Patroklos then proposed that he dresses up as Achilleus to inspire the troops and insight fear into the Trojans. Once again, Achilleus demonstrates hubris by rebutting, “So you will diminish my honor.

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Homer uses this not only to foreshadow what is going to happen in the poem but also to show that the desires of the gods will be predominant and there is no doubt that they will have an active role in the war. The audience is told that the poem will focus on the anger of Achilles and his fury will lead to the gory, unrelenting, and painful death of countless men. Although the overall message of this opening tends to focus on human emotion and the impact of human emotion, through analysis of the final line one can see that the tragic outcome is all the doing of the almighty Zeus. Regardless of the common notion that an individual makes his or her own choices and ultimately they should take responsibility for their actions, in the Iliad, Homer

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