Previous
Chapter 32
Themes
and Colors
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.
Active
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.
Active
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.
Active
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.
Active
Themes
Get the entire The Song of Achilles LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
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.
Active
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.
Active
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.
Active
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.
Active
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.
Active
Themes
Literary Devices
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.
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.
Active
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.
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.
Active
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.
Active
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.
Active
Themes
