Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Song of Achilles, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Honor, Pride, and Legacy
Fate, Belief, and Control
Gender, Power, and Agency
Love, Violence, and Redemption
Selfhood and Responsibility
Summary
Analysis
When Patroclus wakes up the next morning, Achilles is gone. Patroclus goes to look for him, but he’s nowhere to be found—not in the council chamber, not in the lyre practice room. Nervous, Patroclus eventually finds Peleus’s advisor Phoinix, who’s looking at clay tablets, each bearing the names of men who signed up for war. Phoinix is surprised that no one told Patroclus what happened, and he gently says that Thetis took Achilles away to some unknown location.
The lists of men who have signed up to fight in the war indicate that the wealth and “honor” that might be won are attractive to many. Apparently, money and honor are perfectly good reasons for most people to go to war, even though Achilles didn’t think that they were. Meanwhile, Patroclus’s hope to find Achilles in the lyre practice room seems like a hope to escape this time for a more innocent one. That Thetis spirited Achilles away again suggests her desire—among other things—to separate Achilles from Patroclus, and, perhaps, the human aspects of life that Patroclus represents.
Themes
Patroclus knows Achilles would never have gone willingly, and he imagines Thetis stealing him away in the night like a corpse. He knows why she did it: she wanted to separate the two of them at the earliest opportunity, now that they’re away from Chiron’s protection. She’ll take Achilles to the caves and teach him to hate humans. Patroclus imagines Achilles fighting in Troy, wearing cold black armor, spear in hand—eventually, he won’t recognize Patroclus.
Once again, Patroclus associates Thetis with death and imagines her carrying away Achilles’s dead body. Earlier in the novel, Patroclus noted that Achilles appeared to be stone when he was sleeping. Patroclus is making the same comparison here, except now he’s worried that Achilles will be permanently cold and inhuman. He seems to think that Thetis is targeting Patroclus specifically by stealing Achilles away and that this was her plan all along. If that were the case, then Achilles’s transition to an unfeeling warrior would be entirely Thetis’s fault and would have nothing to do with Achilles. In many ways, this is a more convenient narrative than if Achilles were to go to war, kill people of his own volition, and still love Patroclus. It is easier for Patroclus to blame the gods than to imagine Achilles as both beautiful, kind, and a killer..
Themes
Patroclus, grief-stricken, remembers Chiron’s parting comment to him, that he no longer gives up on things. He goes to Peleus, clasping Peleus’s knees and chin in supplication: this intimate position will force Peleus to treat Patroclus fairly by the gods’ laws. Peleus is normally a benevolent king, so supplicants are rare in Phthia. Patroclus demands to know where Achilles is, and after some prodding, Peleus tells him that he’s on an island called Scyros. Patroclus releases Peleus, knowing that the king told him this information only because he’s pious and Patroclus was a supplicant. Peleus appears both angry and weary; he looks out at the sea and dismisses Patroclus.
This is the first time Patroclus is actively fighting for Achilles, which Chiron implied he might have to do. The concept of supplication is an interesting one, because it takes a position of weakness and turns it into a position of strength. This is backwards logic for the Greeks, who generally hate weakness—but in this case, weakness can give you essentially unlimited power over a king, provided the king in question believes in the gods..
Themes
Patroclus arrives in Scyros, a dilapidated island with a modest palace. Its guards, lounging around and playing with dice, reluctantly bring him to see the princess, Deidameia. Deidameia is pretty and arrogant, and she tells Patroclus that Scyros’s king, Lycomedes, is old and ill. Because of this, if Patroclus wants a favor, he should ask her instead. Patroclus, choosing a fake name—Chironides, meaning son of Chiron—asks after the whereabouts of a young man from Phthia. Her tone colder, Deidameia says that she’ll think about telling him, and in the meantime, her women will dance for him; apparently, Scyros is known for its foster daughters. Her coldness and intelligence unsettle Patroclus. He thinks about Scyros’s vulnerability: it’s a poor island, and if everyone knew a woman ruled, it would soon be seized.
The mention of dice connects Patroclus’s fight for Achilles now with his earlier fight with Clysonymus. But this connection actually highlights the differences between these two fights: Patroclus is no longer out to save his own honor; he just wants Achilles back. His adoption of Chiron’s name suggests both that he views Chiron as a father figure and that he may be subconsciously thinking about Chiron’s advice not to give up on the things he cares about. His mission to find Achilles takes an interesting turn with the entrance of Deidameia, who seems to be running the island in her father’s stead. Her reaction to the mention of Phthia hints that she knows where Achilles is, and her decision to make Patroclus watch a dance first seems to be her way of lording that information over him. This is the most power any woman besides Thetis has had so far in the novel. As he did with Thetis, Patroclus realizes the limitations of Deidameia’s seemingly unlimited power. She rules the island now, but if another kingdom realizes that a woman rules, they’ll attack and her rule will be over. Deidameia’s rule depends on the fact that no one else knows she rules.
Themes
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After dinner, Deidameia summons a group of women, their hair hidden and tied back. They begin to dance, Deidameia partnering with the tallest one. She dances beautifully and appears to flirt with her partner. After the dance is over, the partner curtsies and looks up, and Patroclus sees that it’s Achilles, posing as a woman. Achilles embraces Patroclus fiercely. After the other women leave, Achilles (who is still pretending to be a woman) tells an alarmed King Lycomedes that his husband, Patroclus, has come to claim him, and that the two will now leave Scyros. He curtsies—and a dazed Patroclus notes that Achilles curtsies very well.
Deidameia seems to have been taunting Patroclus—since he was looking for Achilles, she planned to parade Achilles right in front of him without telling him, assuming that Patroclus wouldn’t recognize Achilles. That Patroclus does recognize Achilles signals the depth of their connection—and proves that Patroclus was right when he claimed that he could recognize Achilles anywhere. As with Patroclus’s earlier act of supplication, Achilles is feigning weakness (being a woman) to get the upper hand. While Deidameia is pretending she has more power than she does, Achilles is pretending he has less—which then lets him say that Patroclus has “claimed him” and get what he wants. It remains unclear why Achilles is on Scyros, or whether he chose to be. This seems unlikely, since he’s now so eager to leave.
Themes
Deidameia begins to sob and shriek. She accuses the “heartless” Achilles of betraying her. She then reveals to Lycomedes that Achilles is really a man and that she and Achilles are secretly married. Achilles’s pleas for her to stop only enrage her further—she says she’s the only person who knows his identity, and she threatens to tell everyone. A cold voice cuts through the sobbing to tell Deidameia that she’ll do no such thing; Patroclus recognizes Thetis immediately. Thetis’s appearance is wilder than ever before, even demonic. Achilles tells her he won’t pretend any longer, and he apologizes to Lycomedes for the deception: Thetis didn’t want him to go to war, and she chose to hide him in Scyros and have him pose as a woman.
Patroclus had believed that Thetis wanted Achilles to go to war to gain honor and ascend to godhood. But clearly he was wrong: Thetis has gone to great lengths to try to protect—even hide—Achilles from this war. Deidameia tries to assert her power over Achilles by threatening to reveal his secret; but Thetis intervenes and asserts her power to insist that Deidameia do no such thing. Love, power, and control are all mixed together in this scene. While Thetis can control Deidameia, though, she now can no longer control Achilles. Her wild demonic look attests both to her power as goddess, but also hints at her loss of control.
Themes
Defiant, Deidameia says that Achilles can’t leave, since Thetis married the two of them. At these words, Patroclus feels something fall from a great height in his chest. Agreeing, Thetis tells Lycomedes that he’s morally bound to Achilles due to Deidameia’s marriage, and must continue to secretly shelter him. In return, Deidameia can claim him as her husband someday—he’ll be at the height of his fame then. The shell-shocked Lycomedes agrees; he has no choice. But Deidameia can’t be silent, since she slept with Achilles at Thetis’s request and needs to claim him as her husband now or else she will lose her honor. Thetis refuses, calling her foolish. Trembling, Deidameia reveals that she’s pregnant. Achilles and Lycomedes are visibly horrified; Patroclus leaves the room, feeling hollow.
Thetis has done a lot of scheming to try to control events and protect Achilles from going to war at Troy. She has stolen Achilles away, made him marry Deidameia, and convinced Deidamia into accepting a secret marriage in hopes of one day being married to the famous Achilles. Earlier Deidameia reveled I her power—over Scyros, over Patroclus, over Achilles. But now that power is revealed as hollow. Deidameia sought to cement her power by marrying Achilles the way that a king might cement power by marrying the daughter of a different powerful king. But unlike women in this society, Achilles cannot be treated like property. This scene also reveals that honor for women is distinctly different than honor for men. Female honor apparently centers around virginity, whereas with men it’s all about heroism. Patroclus, meanwhile, experiences all this as a shock and betrayal—while Achilles was compelled by his mother, he still married and had sex with Deidameia.
Themes
Achilles follows. It takes him longer than usual, because his dress tangles his legs. More upset than Patroclus has ever seen him, Achilles says he didn’t want to marry Deidameia or sleep with her. Thetis said if he did, she’d tell Patroclus where she’d taken him. Patroclus wonders why Deidameia didn’t think he’d recognize Achilles; he’d know him anywhere.
The way that the dress interferes with Achilles normal physical dexterity is another signal about the way women are restrained by Greek society. Achilles describes his betrayal of Patroclus as an effort to actually get back to Patroclus. Both Thetis and Achilles used Deidameia as a means to an end.
Themes
Patroclus says, dully, that it was all for nothing, as Peleus told him where Achilles was, not Thetis. Patroclus reflects that Achilles has always been too trusting, something Patroclus used to resent. He wants to reproach Achilles, but he can’t: he realizes that Achilles’s trust is innate, and he wouldn’t want Achilles to be as afraid as everyone else. Patroclus realizes that Achilles looked at Deidameia like he didn’t see her, but he never looked at Patroclus that way. He tells Achilles there’s nothing to forgive.
Patroclus works through his anger in this scene, and emerges on the other side: not just a willingness to accept Achilles for who he is, but an insistence on it. He sees that Achilles’s trusting nature can be manipulated, but he wants Achilles to maintain that goodness because it as it the core of who Achilles is. He also realizes that sex is not love; that Achilles feels no love for Deidameia despite having slept with her. It’s interesting that Patroclus accepts Achilles’s trust as an innate part of him but rarely thinks about his other innate traits, such as violence. It can be argued that Patroclus is selectively accepting Achilles. It's easy to forgive Achilles when love is involved—it may be harder to forgive Achilles for violent actions later.
Themes
They return to the palace on Scyros and run into Lycomedes, who tells Achilles that Deidameia is crying in her room and hopes Achilles will visit. Lycomedes asks Achilles to swear that the child will bear his name, and while Achilles hesitates for a moment, he does promise. Patroclus pities the old king. When they head to the guest quarters, Achilles’s hair is disheveled, his dress torn, and he uses a high-pitched voice. The guard escorting them grins at Patroclus.
The power dynamics on Scyros have flipped. Deidameia went from ruling the island to crying in her room, and now Achilles is in the position to take requests from Lycomedes, who should have the most power on his island but because of his daughter’s potentially besmirched honor. Meanwhile, the scene further highlights the weakness of women in this society when the guard—who thinks Achilles is a girl; and who further looks on with a grin at what he thinks is a girl whom Patroclus has just had sex with or perhaps even sexually assaulted this—the weakness of women in this society.
Themes
That night, Achilles and Patroclus discuss Thetis’s decision to hide him from the war, which Patroclus doesn’t understand. As Achilles describes it, Thetis told him that he’s too young to fight. The disguise was her idea, though Achilles doesn’t seem ashamed by it like another boy would be; after all, he’s never experienced ridicule. Patroclus can’t quite believe that this plan wasn’t related to his presence in Achilles’s life, and Achilles agrees that Deidameia was because of Patroclus, but the rest was the war.
Thetis wants Achilles to be a god, and in order to be a god, he needs to fight—that’s what his skills are for, and that’s the only way he’ll gain glory. Patroclus’s puzzlement therefore foreshadows future revelations about Thetis’s reasons for not wanting Achilles to fight. While Thetis and Patroclus would prefer Achilles not fight in this coming war, Thetis nonetheless still wants full control over Achilles—as made clear by her efforts to separate Achilles from Patroclus via marriage to Deidameia. And Deidameia, meanwhile, who thought she had a power, was just a pawn. Finally, this scene once again highlights how Achilles’s honor, unlike that of essentially anyone else in the novel, is innate to the degree that he doesn’t register embarrassment because he can’t even imagine being the subject of ridicule. The regular emphasis on this trait of Achilles is an indication that it is likely to be challenged at some point in the novel.
Themes
