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
At night, Priam (Hector’s father and king of Troy) sneaks to Achilles’s tent, soaking wet from swimming to the Greek camp. Slightly stunned, Achilles offers him food, and Priam thanks him, seeming old and fragile. Priam says that Achilles isn’t known to be a cruel man and asks him to return Hector’s body to be buried so that his soul can rest. Priam says that he was guided to Achilles’s tent by the gods, and adds that he knows that Achilles can kill him, but he thinks it’s worth the risk to ask for Hector’s body. Priam expresses sorrow for Achilles’s loss, and says that he’s sorry that Hector caused it. he then says that, in their similar grief, they have to look out for one another. Priam tells Achilles that they should give the dead peace, as “there’s no peace for those who live after.” Achilles, moved, agrees to send Hector’s body back. The next day, he burns Patroclus’s body, and he tells the Greeks to mix his own ashes with Patroclus’s ashes after he himself is dead.
Priam’s appeal to Achilles has an entirely different tone from Hector’s and Thetis’s. Hector asked Achilles to return his body without giving a reason, but the implication was that it would be the honorable thing to do. Thetis told Achilles to return the body because failing to do so would anger Apollo. Priam is asking Achilles to return the body based on an experience of shared grief. In this grief, Priam confirms to Achilles that the concept of Greek honor no longer matters: even if Hector was justified in killing Patroclus and Achilles was justified in killing Hector, Priam now sees them as so irrelevant that Priam is willing to apologize on Hector’s behalf. Priam’s comment that there’s no peace for the living explicitly recalls the story Chiron told about Heracles. At the time, Achilles couldn’t understand why the gods punished Heracles by forcing him to kill his wife and children and leaving him alive. Now, Achilles understands Heracles’s pain, because he’s alive and Patroclus is gone. Priam and Achilles have nothing in common except their shared grief at loss of a loved one, but that’s enough for Achilles to do the right thing and return the body. In this way, Achilles’s love ends up redeeming him, and allowing him to see outside himself and his own grief. Priam’s visit therefore also spurs Achilles to tend to Patroclus’s soul by burning his body—this is the first thing he’s done since Patroclus’s death that’s truly for Patroclus’s sake. (As a side note, the novel Ransom tells the story of Priam’s trip into the Greek camp and meeting with Achilles from Priam’s point of view.)
Themes
Heroes come to Troy to replace Hector and Sarpedon and to kill Achilles. One of them is Memnon, the king of Aethiopia, whom Achilles kills easily, wearily. Another is the horsewoman Penthesilea. Achilles is grieved to kill her; he thinks she seemed quick enough to strike him. Achilles also slaughters Priam’s youngest son, Troilus, who is seeking revenge. One day, Paris strings a bow from within the Trojan walls, asking Apollo where to aim. He thought Achilles was indestructible, except for his—but Apollo cuts him off. Achilles isn’t a god, and if someone shoots him, he’ll die like any other man. So Paris shoots. The arrow hits Achilles’s back, and Achilles smiles when he falls.
Violence breeds violence. Heroes die, and new heroes rise to take their place. Achilles kills one hero, and others come to prove themselves by killing him. That Achilles continues to play this game—despite wanting to die himself—shows just how prevalent the Greek concept of honor won through battle is. Yet despite Achilles power, Apollo makes clear that he’s no god—Thetis efforts to manage Achilles’s fate have failed just as Patroclus’s did. Note how: Apollo cuts Paris off before he can say where he believed Achilles was vulnerable. This is a reference to Achilles’s heel. In some versions of Greek mythology, Achilles is invulnerable except for his heel. However, this novel doesn’t abide by that mythology—and in this moment, and earlier in the novel when Patroclus noticed Achilles’s heels “flashing” as he ran, Madeline Miller is slyly referencing the aspects of the Greek myths that she didn’t use. The point, also, is that Achilles was always vulnerable, always able to be killed. It was his skill in battle that kept him alive. But he was also always just a man. Achilles, meanwhile, is happy to die—happy to be reunited with Patroclus in death.
Themes
