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 sea-nymphs take Achilles’s body. When he burns on the pyre, they weep at the loss of beauty. But some onlookers don’t cry at all: Briseis watches until the last flame dies. Thetis and all the soldiers stand, impassive and tearless. A bandaged Ajax almost cries, but maybe he’s just glad that he’ll be promoted. Odysseus asks Thetis what they should do with the ashes. It’s impossible to tell what she’s thinking or if she grieves. She tells him that she doesn’t care, but she’s aware of what Achilles wanted them to do with the ashes. Someone mixes their ashes, and from wherever his soul is, Patroclus can tell that it’s happened. However, he can’t feel anything physically—his soul and Achilles’s are separated and will be until their names are marked together on their grave.
The only people who cry for Achilles are the ones who didn’t know him. And they cry not for who he was, but for his lost beauty. Achilles’s final act of kindness—returning Hector’s body—may have redeemed him to some degree, but clearly Phoinix was right and some people will never forgive him for refusing to fight. No one has a real reason to mourn Achilles except for Thetis, but her last conversation with Achilles ended their relationship on a complicated note. The fact that Thetis allows the mixing of the ashes suggests that even though she hated Patroclus and his influence on her son, she never wanted Achilles to be unhappy.
Themes
Agamemnon calls a meeting to talk about where to put Achilles’s tomb. Menelaus suggests a central location, and Odysseus suggests a place near the Phthian camp. Suddenly, a voice interrupts: it’s a young boy with bright red hair who is coldly beautiful. He looks exactly like Achilles, except for his chin, which resembles Thetis. This is Pyrrhus, Achilles’s son. He takes Achilles’s seat and offers himself to the Greeks in his father’s place. Agamemnon is displeased, as he’d hoped to be rid of Achilles. He says that Pyrrhus seems too young to take this position, but Pyrrhus retorts that he has been raised by the gods and the Fates have declared that Troy will only fall once he has joined the battle.
Once again, Odysseus is looking out for Achilles and Patroclus. He’s the one who placed the Phthian camp so it would be far away from the other kings, and he’s trying to make sure Achilles and Patroclus remain undisturbed by placing their grave there as well. Odysseus might be manipulative, but his motives seem to have never been about cruelty or dominance. Meanwhile, Pyrrhus matches Achilles in looks and in pride. Unlike Achilles, though, Pyrrhus seems nothing but excited about his destiny, and he resembles Thetis more than Achilles did. This suggests that Thetis was right: Pyrrhus is like the version of Achilles that Thetis wished for because she raised him herself.
Themes
Menelaus tells Pyrrhus that they were just talking about where to bury “them.” Pyrrhus is confused; why is the tomb for two people? There’s a pause before Menelaus explains that the second is Patroclus, Achilles’s companion. Achilles wanted them to be buried together. Pyrrhus tells them that Achilles shouldn’t be buried with a “slave” and that while he can’t unmix the ashes, he won’t taint his father’s legacy by marking the grave with Patroclus’s name. The kings look at each other, and Agamemnon agrees to follow Pyrrhus’s wishes. From afar, Patroclus can’t do anything about this. They mark the huge gravestone with Achilles’s name—its size speaks to Achilles’s greatness.
Achilles died finally understanding that love mattered more than honor. Pyrrhus immediately disregards his father’s wishes, in the name of honor and legacy. Meanwhile, Agamemnon sees one more chance to thwart and control Achilles, and he takes it.
Themes
Pyrrhus’s banners have Scyros’s symbol, not Phthia’s, but he claims the Myrmidon army as his own. He notices Briseis and recognizes her name—that she’s the reason that Achilles refused to fight. That night, he calls her to his tent. When she arrives, he’s lounging casually. Patroclus notes that Achilles might have sat in the same position, but Pyrrhus’s eyes are empty and Achilles’s never were. Pyrrhus tells Briseis that she must have been a great bed-slave if Achilles stopped fighting for her. Briseis says she’s honored, but that’s not the reason; she’s a war-prize, and Agamemnon was trying to dishonor Achilles by stealing her. She wasn’t even his bed-slave.
Pyrrhus has claimed his grandfather’s throne at Scyros, and now claims his father’s army as his own. He takes what he wants, based on his bloodline as his legacy. Pyrrhus’s casual position when Briseis enters the room echoes Achilles’s stance when Patroclus first met him, but the first thing Patroclus noticed about Achilles was that he wasn’t cruel, since Achilles didn’t joke about Patroclus’s poor social position. In contrast, Pyrrhus’s interaction with Briseis is purposely cruel. That it’s founded on a misunderstanding—Pyrrhus believes that Briseis was Achilles’s bed slave—is also revealing: Pyrrhus can only imagine women as being “valuable” if they are sexual objects.
Themes
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Pyrrhus doesn’t believe Briseis. She pauses and then asks if Pyrrhus has heard about Patroclus—Pyrrhus says no, because Patroclus doesn’t matter. Briseis presses on: Achilles loved Patroclus and would want them buried together. He didn’t need Briseis. Angry now, Pyrrhus tells her to come forward. Patroclus hopes she’ll run, but she doesn’t. Instead she grabs a knife from and tries to kill Pyrrhus, but she’s never killed anyone—he evades her attack.
Briseis seems to be hinting about Achilles’s real relationship with Patroclus by saying that Achilles loved Patroclus and never slept with her. This is a huge risk on her part, the same kind of risk that Patroclus took when he saved Briseis from Agamemnon. In this case, she’s taking this risk to save Patroclus’s soul, not his life. But Pyrrhus is only angered at this possible slight to what he sees as his father’s honor. He responds to her statement of love with implied violence.
Themes
Now Briseis runs all the way into the ocean and begins to swim. Pyrrhus grabs a spear and his guard tells him to throw it, but he waits for her to get further. Patroclus is glad—she’s too far for any man to hit her, except for Achilles. But Pyrrhus is Achilles’s son, and his spear strikes her back. Phoinix sends someone out to find the body, but they don’t. Patroclus hopes that her gods are kinder than the Greek gods and will let her rest anyway. He thinks that he’d die again just to make that happen.
Achilles as youth had rules for who and how he would fight—he had an internal code of honor. Pyrrhus has the same skills as his father, but he kills Briseis as if it is a game, and in a way that is as cruel as possible. Pyrrhus is like a version of Achilles who has completely bought into the Greek conception of “honor” as simply a product of battle skill and a willingness to kill and wield power absolutely—and he is a brutal monster, revealing what that code of honor extended to its logical endpoint would result in. Briseis, meanwhile, ended up powerless, her body lost, despite the fact that for a large chunk of the novel she had more power than other women.
Themes
True to the gods’ word, Troy falls with Pyrrhus’s help, with a horse, and with a plan from Odysseus. But it’s Pyrrhus who kills Priam and Pyrrhus who finds Hector’s wife. He smashes her child against the wall, something that horrifies even Agamemnon. The Greeks pack up quickly, and though Patroclus haunts all of their dreams, begging them to help him, they don’t notice, or they don’t listen. The night before they leave, Pyrrhus demands a sacrifice in Achilles’s name. He grabs the Trojan princess Polyxena and slits her throat, claiming that Achilles’s soul is happy.
This passage speeds through the remaining most significant events of the Trojan War, likely because Patroclus doesn’t care about them; he was only invested in the war when Achilles’s honor and life were at stake. Pyrrhus’s monstrousness, meanwhile, shocks even Agamemnon. Pyrrhus, meanwhile, is doing all of these things in Achilles’s name. He and Achilles may have shared all the same skills and Achilles may not have cared about strangers’ lives, but Achilles was capable of love and sometimes even empathy; Pyrrhus obviously isn’t. Achilles was horrified at the sacrifice of the innocent Iphigenia, and now Pyrrhus has sacrificed a similarly innocent woman and claimed that it was for Achilles. Pyrrhus is all the worst parts of Achilles with none of Achilles’s love or occasional kindness.
Themes
Patroclus haunts Odysseus in his sleep, saying that he helped Odysseus when Achilles wouldn’t. Odysseus knows exactly what Patroclus meant to Achilles; he knew that even before they came to Troy, and now it’s up to him. Odysseus goes to find Pyrrhus, who apparently never sleeps, and says he feels guilty, which doesn’t happen often. He says: when they leave Troy tomorrow, every man who died will have been buried, except for one.
Despite all his trickery and manipulation, Odysseus is the Greek king who would best understand Patroclus’s relationship with Achilles, because of his own true love for his wife Penelope.
Themes
Odysseus adds that he wasn’t Achilles’s friend, but he valued him, and he got to know him well after ten years. He knows, therefore, that Achilles wouldn’t want Patroclus forgotten. Pyrrhus asks if Achilles said so, and Odysseus says that he asked for their ashes to be mingled and for them to be buried together, so it’s probably safe to assume. Patroclus appreciates how clever he is, for once. Odysseus adds that Patroclus was once a prince, that many soldiers respected him, and that he killed Sarpedon.
This is a masterclass in manipulation. Odysseus frames his request from Achilles’s perspective, even though Patroclus is the one who’s been haunting him. Odysseus is framing the need to bury Patroclus as fulfilling Achilles’s wishes , Achilles’s legacy. He also bends the truth so it seems like Achilles was concerned about how Patroclus would be remembered. Achilles wasn’t—his burial request had more to do with allowing their souls to rest together than it did with Patroclus’s legacy—but Odysseus acts like Achilles was invested in Patroclus’s honor, something Pyrrhus can understand. Odysseus then gives examples of Patroclus’s honor honed to appeal to the bloodthirsty Pyrrhus: his killing of a hero.
Themes
Pyrrhus argues that Patroclus’s actions are only significant because of Patroclus’s connection to Achilles. Odysseus agrees, but he notes that fame is fickle—some men are only famous after death. No one knows who will be remembered. One day, Odysseus could be more famous than Pyrrhus, a notion at which Pyrrhus scoffs. Odysseus asks if Pyrrhus has a wife—Odysseus’s voice is thick with emotion as he says that he doesn’t know when he’ll see her again, and his only solace is that should he not see her again that they’ll one day find each other in the underworld. Pyrrhus responds that Achilles had no such wife. Resigned, Odysseus says that he did all he can and asks that his attempt be remembered. Patroclus, his soul silently watching, remembers.
By dismissing Patroclus’s actions, Pyrrhus is suggesting that dependence on someone else is inherently dishonorable, which again proves that he doesn’t understand love. Odysseus’s response is both ironic and meta-textual: he will be more famous than Pyrrhus, as the titular character of Homer’s Odyssey, while Pyrrhus is only a minor character in Greek mythology. Further, Odysseus’s fame is based in part on his tricky intellect, but also for his steadfast love for his wife and relentless efforts to return to her. Odysseus’s fame is based on love, which Pyrrhus scoffs at and can’t understand. Ultimately, Odysseus is right that unexpected people become famous, which means that Pyrrhus’s ideas about honor and legacy—the same ideas Achilles had earlier in the novel—are wrong. Odysseus’s kindness in making this effort is genuinely honorable, whereas the Greeks’ ideas about honor—as embodied in Pyrrhus—will seem cruel someday. The reason Odysseus is capable of being genuinely honorable is that he, like Achilles and unlike Pyrrhus, understands love.
Themes
The Greeks leave Troy, and Patroclus remains, hovering near Achilles’s grave. Achilles is in the underworld, and Patroclus can’t be with him. As time passes, visitors come like tourists to see the monument. The stone depicts Achilles’s greatest acts of violence: killing Memnon, Hector, Penthesilea. This is probably how Pyrrhus’s grave will look too, Patroclus thinks. This is how people will remember Achilles.
Achilles’s gravestone isn’t incorrect about who he was: he did kill everyone the stone depicts. But it does seem unfair that his gravestone will look the same as Pyrrhus’s, because while both men were killers, Achilles was also capable of love. Patroclus always attempted to separate Achilles the soldier from Achilles the man, but now everyone will only remember the former, and Achilles was definitely both. Achilles’s legacy has turned out to be his cruelest acts, rather than those things Patroclus loved about him: his beauty, innocence, and ability to love and show empathy.
Themes
One day, Thetis comes to the monument. Patroclus hates her more than before—Pyrrhus was her doing, and she cared more about him than Achilles. He tries to speak to her and she leaves. But she comes back every day, and he always lashes at her with angry words. He tells her that she thought Chiron “ruined [Achilles],” but that it was she who did that. Now, he tells her, people will remember Achilles for the cruel acts he committed while half-mad with grief. The gods might call that glory, but there’s no glory in murder. Humans die easily, and Achilles should be remembered for other things.
Patroclus has sometimes blamed Thetis for things that aren’t her fault, but these criticisms strike true. Thetis did believe that Achilles’s humanity and capacity for love weakened him, when in fact those traits were what kept him from being as monstrous as Pyrrhus. One might argue, in contrast, that Patroclus here swings too often swung in the other direction by suggesting that Achilles’s grief, which stemmed from love, meant that the murders he committed weren’t entirely his doing. But Thetis’s fault is greater, as she drove Achilles to deny what made him unique among heroes in order to chase glory and godhood. That Thetis now keeps returning to the monument each day, despite Patroclus’s verbal attacks, suggests that she misses Achilles, and feels some regret over her actions.
Themes
Thetis asks what things, and Patroclus tells her, newly unafraid: returning Hector’s body to Priam, playing the lyre, claiming the Trojan women. Thetis interjects, saying that was Patroclus, not Achilles. He responds to ask why she’s not with Pyrrhus, and she responds that Pyrrhus was murdered by Agamemnon’s son for raping his bride. Patroclus asks, scornfully, if Pyrrhus was really better than Achilles. She asks him to share more memories, so he does; he wants Achilles to live. He tells her about small moments of joy with Achilles, such as the way he ran and how his hair looked in the sun.
Once again, Patroclus sees Achilles as just a little bit better than he really was. Achilles did return Hector’s body and he was skilled with the lyre, but Achilles certainly wouldn’t have saved the Trojan woman without Patroclus’s urging. By reminding Patroclus of this, Thetis forces Patroclus to come to terms with Achilles’s complications and contradictions. At the same time, Patroclus forces Thetis to value Achilles’s humanity. She seems to realize that she made a mistake with Pyrrhus—ultimately, he died because he wasn’t capable of love or empathy, and Achilles died because he was. It’s not hard to see who she should have appreciated more. Her request that Patroclus share more memories seems to be an acknowledgment that Achilles’s humanity meant something—that it made him special. In this scene, Patroclus is building a new, verbal memorial to Achilles, totally unlike the memorial on Achilles’s grave. This is the legacy he always wanted to build for Achilles, and although people will always remember Achilles’s cruel deeds and might even consider them honorable, he’s ensuring that they’ll also remember Achilles’s kindness. This memorial is only heard by Thetis, but it’s made permanent on a meta level: Patroclus’s memorial of Achilles is the one that readers of the novel will remember, since it comes at the story’s end.
Themes
Thetis, in turn, tells Patroclus of her rape and that it came about because of the Fates’ prophecy about Achilles prior to his birth: that he’d outshine his father. This frightened the gods, so they forced her to mate with a mortal to lessen Achilles’s potential power. Now she can’t go to Achilles in the underworld, so this monument of him is all she has.
This story of Thetis’s rape is very different from the one Patroclus heard earlier. He believed that her assault was a reward for Peleus’s piety, which may be partly true. But the gods also needed Thetis to bear a son with a mortal because they knew her son would end up being more powerful than his father. If his father was a god, that would make the son unimaginably powerful. Thetis’s agency was taken away not just to reward Peleus but to maintain the patriarchal status quo—to ensure that the male gods weren’t outshone by an unborn child. Thetis had no control then and she has no control now: all of her scheming was for nothing, because she can’t even see her son.
Themes
When Patroclus has shared everything he could, Thetis tells him, sorrowfully, that she couldn’t make Achilles into a god. He says it doesn’t matter, because she “made him.” After a long pause, she tells Patroclus that she did it, and he notices that the grave now bears both of their names. Achilles is waiting for him, she says. He goes; two shadows find each other in the darkness, and light emerges.
Patroclus is basically telling Thetis that the fact that she loved Achilles is enough, and that the fact of Achilles uniqueness as a mortal outshines whether he would ever become a god. In the end, the love Patroclus and Achilles shared saves Patroclus’s soul, because this love of Achilles that he shares with Thetis convinces her to mark the gravestone with Patroclus’s name. Achilles’s final act of love for Patroclus also factors in: his kindness toward Priam was one of the things that must have swayed Thetis, and he returned Hector’s body only because he could understand Priam’s grief. Achilles’s love for Patroclus redeemed him, while Thetis’s love for her son redeems her is hers. She’s been cruel to Patroclus for years, but she wants Achilles to be happy even if that happiness excludes her. And in marking the grave, Thetis takes agency in a way she never has before, despite all her scheming. At the end of the novel, Patroclus’s soul is at rest with Achilles’s and readers remember Achilles as the full, complicated person he was, rather than the one-dimensional hero depicted on his grave or one-dimensional innocent Patroclus constantly tried to justify. Because the novel ends with their reunion, the real legacy Patroclus and Achilles share is their love for one another.
Themes
