Gendering Mourning

Rage and sorrow are familiar bedfellows. They are, however, different emotions. Studying the latter can shed light on the former for Achilles. That is to say, his rage is not the only emotion in which the mighty warrior indulges to excess of cultural norms. Take his immediate reaction to the news of Patroclus’ death, for example:

Achilles is the child of a man and goddess, and as such, he acts with greater magnitude than other mortals. He fights harder than other men. He loves deeper. He rages more intensely, and he mourns to a degree that exceeds cultural expectations. Everything Achilles does seems to go beyond societal norms, not just his rage, albeit the latter is the most common example. Here, we see that even Achilles’ mourning in the Iliad exceeds gender expectations and threatens the community.

Achilles’ reaction to the death of Patroclus is gendered in its expressiveness and in the threat to the community that indulging in his sorrow entails. Upon learning of his beloved friend’s death, Achilles collapses to the ground, pouring dirt about his body, and pulling out his hair as he lay crying and moaning. This reaction is not necessarily gendered in itself. There is a clear example from the 8th century BCE of a Geometric funeral marker depicting friends of the deceased possibly pulling out their hair as they ritually mourn the dead (see inset below).

The Iliad was composed during the same era as this vase (latter half of the 8th century), but Book 18 conspicuously shows us Achilles as the lone male to befoul his face and pull out his hair. The women of his “house” (servants won in battle such as Briseis would have been) rush out to join him in this activity while the lone male warrior other than Achilles, Antilochus, stands stoically by, afraid that Achilles might kill himself, thus imperiling the community (Greek fleet) further. Even his mother, Thetis, and the rest of the Nereids,[1] wailed and beat their breasts. Achilles is conspicuous as the only male to engage in such visceral shows of emotion. 

The Anguish of Achilles

Thetis leaves her deep sea abode for the beached ships to console her son and asks him why he is so upset. After all, Agamemnon has been embarrassed and forced to recognize Achilles’ value to the army. Achilles replies,

It is ironic that Achilles received from Zeus exactly what he asked of the deity and was promised by Athena in Book 1. The Iliad shares with 5th century Athenian drama what is referred to as the tragic world view. This link is particularly strong in Sophoclean tragedies, which are defined by human ignorance. Humans in Sophocles’ plays are characterized by their inability to understand the true meaning of their actions or circumstances. In his pursuit of honor and the humiliation of Agamemnon, Achilles unwittingly brought about the death of his dearest friend (“I loved him, and I killed him”).

In bemoaning his own ill fortune, Achilles reiterates the problem of romance between mortals and immortals that we discussed above. He frames Thetis’ love for Peleus as a curse that would bind her to suffering through her connection to frail, ephemeral mortals: “it was all so you would suffer pain for your ravaged son.”

This connection to mortal suffering has indeed ensnared Thetis, and she warns Achilles that his death is fated to follow soon after that of Hector’s. Achilles replies:

This reply touches on many of the themes and motifs that we have dealt with over the course of the poem. In the first four lines, Achilles expresses a desire for death while in the depths of his despair. This is the Achilles we encountered at the outset of Book 18, a man given over entirely to mourning to the extent that his own life, let alone the survival of his community (the army), is inconsequential. In fact, one could read into this the desire for death in a world without Patroclus. Antilochus certainly thought suicide was a real possibility.

The next topic is anger itself. We noted in Book 9 that Achilles is a highly intelligent and psychologically complex hero. He enjoys a self-awareness brought on by his own suffering that other heroes in the epic cannot “enjoy.” Throughout this commentary, we have noted a complex interrelationship between logic, emotion, and action. Achilles does so himself in his reply to Thetis: he directly acknowledges the effects of anger, how the emotion has affected both his and Agamemnon’s decisions throughout the Iliad. In Achilles’ own words, anger “sends sensible men into fits of temper.” But there is a bitter desire to feed that anger, as if satiating oneself with the sweetness of honey, only to discover that, when the honey reaches one’s belly, it was a lie, a deception, not honey but poison, an arsenic that burns and destroys rather than nourishes and replenishes.

Finally, Achilles announces his intention to take revenge on Hector for the death of Patroclus. Achilles’ life means little and less to him at this point. Hector’s death will be compensation enough for his short life – that and to win glory on the battlefield in the process. Achilles’ great glory in battle will come at the expense of many Trojans. He will bring death, both to Hector and the Trojans as well as himself; and sorrow to his mother, the Trojan wives, children, and mothers alike. In a sense, Achilles has returned to the fold: “we’ll let that be, no matter how it hurts, and conquer our pride because we must.” He will fight on the battlefield, accruing the honor and glory for which all warriors fight. Yet he does so with the expressed purpose of revenge, an action motivated by anger, after having just detailed the ways in which anger manipulates human action in a deeply negative way.

The remainder of Book 18 details the forging of Achilles new armor by Hephaestus. The details on the shield are given particular attention and are well worth an essay in and of themselves. We will not attempt such an endeavor in this commentary.