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
One day, Achilles goes to see Thetis. Patroclus had thought—he now realizes stupidly—that Thetis wouldn’t want to see Achilles due to her grief, but if anything, their visits have become longer. While Achilles is gone, Patroclus waits with Briseis, who is curious about what Achilles is doing. In response, Patroclus reveals that Achilles’s mother is a goddess. Briseis says she figured that, because Achilles doesn’t “move like a human,” while Patroclus does.
Patroclus consistently underestimates how much Thetis cares about her son, even though she constantly shows that she cares about basically nothing else. Of course she wants to see him just as much as Patroclus does; they both love him. Briseis’s comment suggests that Achilles doesn’t seem human to other people, but as the novel has demonstrated, Achilles is both human and divine. That he doesn’t seem to be makes his situation more complicated..
Themes
When Achilles returns, Briseis departs. Achilles tells Patroclus that Thetis is worried, because the gods are taking sides in the war. She’s especially anxious about the prophecy: the gods promised Achilles fame, but they didn’t say how much. Because of that, Thetis worries that someone will kill Hector before Achilles, though soldiers like Ajax have already tried. Achilles knows that he can’t kill Hector, but sometimes he pictures it, dreamlike: throwing the spear, walking up to the body. In the dream, he knows he’ll die soon and, strangely, he feels relieved. But it’s just a dream.
Achilles control over the events of the war—and the fame he will win during it—has already been challenged by the politics and ambitions of his fellow Greeks. Now the gods are also getting involved, creating further obstacles to his control. Thetis concern about who kills Hector seems to have two sources: first, Hector’s death will be followed by Achilles; second, if that is the case, then from Thetis’s view it would be best if Achilles is the one to kill him and get that glory. Achilles dream about killing Hector is another instance of foreshadowing. This clearly isn’t a normal dream, and Achilles’s decision to treat it like it’s just a dream mirrors Patroclus’s constant coping mechanism, which has never served him well.
Themes
Anxious about Thetis’s news, Patroclus looks for a distraction. One of the soldiers directs him to the medical tent and, remembering Chiron, he goes. The physician, Machaon, recognizes Patroclus as Chiron’s former student and lets him help. Suddenly, a wounded man enters; he’s been shot in the shoulder with an arrow. Patroclus knows he’ll have to break the arrow and then pull out the arrow without hurting the man further. He braces the man’s shoulder and saws the arrow, snapping off the feathered end. Then he uses a salve to draw the other part of the shaft out. It’s a risky maneuver, but the shoulder heals with minimal pain. The next time someone gets shot, Machaon calls Patroclus over first.
While Achilles is killing in battle, Patroclus is healing them. Chiron is apparently widely-known for his healing prowess (which again begs the question of why he’s the one to train soldiers like Achilles, since learning to heal only complicates their destinies). Chiron also ends up being right about surgery: you sometimes have to harm people or risk harming them, but the goal is still to save them. The novel juxtaposes this sort of violence—committed with the intent to do more good than harm—against the rest of the violence of the war, which involves no such honorable intent.
Themes
Two years pass in this limbo of the war. All the while, Patroclus knows that Achilles will die, but it’s impossible to be afraid at every moment. The Phthian camp becomes a family. As they eat dinner together, Briseis tells stories about her gods, who are half-man, half-animal. Later, Achilles puts some of those stories to music on his lyre. Patroclus feels that finally Achilles has really seen Briseis.
Just as people can still find love and joy in all sorts of dire circumstances, Patroclus learns to live with Achilles’s destiny. There is a kind of control in this, a way to live one’s life within the smaller moments between the “big” events of destiny. Patroclus’s concern for Briseis—that he cares at all about whether Achilles “sees” her—attest to his unique care for women’s place in this society.
Themes
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One day, Achilles asks Briseis what she knows about Hector. She says that she knows more about his beloved wife, whose family lives in a coastal kingdom, Cilicia. After Briseis leaves, Achilles tells Patroclus that they raided Cilicia, and that he now realizes that he killed Hector’s wife’s family. Patroclus knows that Achilles kills daily, but he’s suddenly overwhelmed. He can feel that there will be a storm tonight, and he compares Achilles to a flood. Breaking the silence, Achilles says he left the youngest son alive. Most soldiers wouldn’t—killing an entire family is a glorious thing. Leave one alive, and the line is preserved in memory. Achilles realizes that he always says Hector hasn’t done anything to him, but the reverse isn’t true anymore.
Patroclus’s comparison of Achilles to a flood is significant. A flood is an impersonal force, something that by its nature cannot be stopped, and which cannot stop itself. The metaphor makes Achilles into something super-powerful and inhuman, but at the same time absolves Achilles of moral responsibility for his actions. Patroclus always does seem to find a way to look past or explain away Achilles killing. Achilles, meanwhile, paints himself as more moral, because he allowed a single member of the family to live. That murdering an entire family is connected to glory only further tarnishes the Greek idea of glory. And in seeking this glory Achilles has perhaps brought his fate closer to pass, by doing something to provoke Hector that he had not intended.
Themes
