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Homer's Use Of Warfare In The Iliad

1828 Words8 Pages

Warfare in the Iliad is, as we have seen, an integral part of human life and wider nature. But it is more than that, for it is an essential part of the metaphysical order of the cosmos, the divine arrangements according to which everything behaves the way it does. This central insight is first offered to us in the opening invocation:
Sing, Goddess, sing of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus— that murderous anger which condemned Achaeans to countless agonies, threw many warrior souls deep into Hades, leaving their dead bodies carrion food for dogs and birds— all in fulfilment of the will of Zeus. (1.1)
These famous lines take us straight to the ironic heart of the poem. Right at the beginning, we are told that this story will focus on the hero’s anger, a destructive rage which condemns noble men (warriors) to …show more content…

By means of humanization of the gods, Homer makes his audiences feel better sympathy towards them; the more the gods have human characteristics as jealousy, weeping, complaining, the more the audience empathize themselves with the gods. Besides these humanizations, we see the gods as super beings; they can recover easily, can see everything, arrange the future and so change the fate of human beings by intervening. In addition, by their miraculous actions, a dead person can be revived or an animal can speak; in other words, they can give life and sound to everything that seems impossible. Homer makes the Gods intervene the human affairs to show that whatever human beings try to change their fate, the control of everything is in the hands of the Gods; a man cannot escape from his destiny. Therefore, the Gods are represented as the controllers of human lives and in order to control or intervene in the human affairs, the gods disguise themselves into animals or people so that they can cheat people or help them as they

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Achilles Rage In The Iliad Essay

509 Words | 3 Pages

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1570 Words | 7 Pages

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