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
The next morning, the Trojans are at the Greek gate, aided by Zeus. They’re about to burn the ships. This, Achilles imagines, is the moment he’s been waiting for. But he still won’t intervene unless Agamemnon begs, Hector attacks what belongs to Achilles, or Agamemnon dies. Patroclus worries the men will hate Achilles, but Achilles insists that they should despise Agamemnon instead. Achilles continues to speak cheerfully about where they’ll go for a swim tomorrow, as Patroclus imagines the corpses from the day’s battle.
Again, Zeus seems to be fulfilling his promise to Thetis by helping the Trojans, but Achilles and Thetis should both be suspicious of his intentions. Achilles’s comment that the only way he’d fight Hector, apart from Agamemnon begging or dying, is if Hector harms something of his, can be taken as foreshadowing. Patroclus learned as a child that nothing good comes from defending your honor in this way, but Achilles seems to ignore this lesson. As the Greek ships are about to burn, Achilles almost plays at being a child again, swimming whenever they want, but the context is different and now that “innocence” in the context war feels immoral.
Themes
As they see someone pass by on a stretcher, Patroclus goes to the medical tent to see who it is. It turns out it’s the doctor, Machaon, who was shot by an arrow. Nestor, who is also injured, screams about the other wounded kings: Diomedes, Agamemnon, Odysseus. Machaon asks if Patroclus can speak to Achilles. Patroclus remembers the story about Meleager and Cleopatra, and he imagines her trying to say no to her people. He rushes out of the medical tent and notices that the Greek wall is falling. Patroclus has healed these men; now he watches them die because of Achilles, and because of Patroclus.
Working at the medical tent was always a way for Patroclus to feel that even if Achilles was hurting people, Patroclus was helping them. Now, that’s turned on its head: Machaon is hurt and everyone Patroclus once healed is vulnerable again. Worse, they’re begging Patroclus to help them, and if he doesn’t at least try to convince Achilles to fight, he’s partly responsible for their deaths. This is the first time he’s really acknowledged his own responsibility and dishonorable actions; Achilles might be the one refusing to fight, but Patroclus is the only person who could convince him to change his mind.
Themes
The ships are aflame now. Hector stands at the prow of one of them. He throws a torch directly on the deck, and it catches immediately. He smiles, and Ajax, on the same ship, screams. A spear pierces Ajax’s thigh—right through the muscle—and he falls.
The fact that the ships are burning and Ajax—the Greeks’ second-best fighter—is at the very least injured suggests that Achilles’s plan is paying off and the Greeks are helpless without him. Yet the human cost of Achilles’s “plan” is made clear here, and so the plan “working” at the cost of the lives of his compatriots makes the plan seem like the product of an obsessive pride.
Themes
