Achilles follows tradition through the heroic code and through the fight with Hector. After defeating Hector he believes that Hector’s body should returned to his father. When returning the body Achilles cries with Hector’s father, showing his emotions in a controlled and respectable manner. It is also tradition that a warrior’s body be burned. Homer effectively shows readers through praise how admirable Achilles is, making him the justified character.
<br> It all began when Agamemnon stole away Briseis, Achilles’ woman. To ease the <br>anger Achilles had for Agamemnon, Thetis asked Zeus to provide honor for her son, <br>Achilles. Zeus granted her request by promising that the Achaeans would suffer enough <br>losses to force Agamemnon to come begging for Achilles’ help. <br> The first major change in Achilles was caused by his rage toward Agamemnon. <br>Achilles, the great warrior, allowed his wrath to infest his desire to help his own comrades <br>in the battle against the Trojans.
The constant struggles to achieve authority and power greatly influence the fate of the characters. Agamemnon is a signifier for political power. He thinks that a “person will wince at the thought of opposing [him] as an equal” (Lawall, p.111, lines 196-197), demonstrating his military and political strength. The warlord refuses the ransom Chryses offers him for his daughter “and [dismisses] Chryses with a rough speech” (Lawall, p.108, line 33). The reason for his refusal was not the girl herself but rather what she represents to him; Chryseis represents his dominance over a territory because she was the prize given to him after the conquest of Thebes.
They seek glory on the battlefield, to die a hero, to be honored in death by their people yet they were depicted as very different men who had come to a time in their lives where their ultimate reasons for the war were very different. Achilles was considered the warrior-champion of the Achaeans and came to live his life by violence, defending his people and defeating and or attacking his enemies. He was not a family man instead he is portrayed as a man fighting for his own self-satisfaction. When Agamemnon, also a warrior chieftain, shamed Achilles by claiming Briseis, Achilles war prize he is humiliated and his anger brews and he tells Agamemnon “Far better to head home with my curved ships than stay here, unhonored myself and piling up a fortune for you.” (111) and with that he leaves to back to Phthia. He had decided to kill Agamemnon but Athena came to him, sent by Hera, and told him to get his anger under control.
Achilles Achilles´s wrath is triggered by his pride and honor, the pride of being a Greek and his honor comes from his desire for greatness and immortality. Within the Iliad Achilles’s anger is triggered with an attack on his honor and pride. When Agamemnon takes Briseis, he responds with withdrawing from the Trojan war, and the Trojans use that opportunity to attack the Greeks with them vulnerable due to loss of Achilles in the frontline. His wrath climaxes when he gives up all laws of society and humanity and lets his hate for the Trojans take a new level after Patroklos is killed, when Achilles kills Hektor, were Achilles drags Hektors body around from his carriage and mutilates his body. Here the reader gets a
Right from the beginning of the Illiad, the reader finds out a lot about Achilles. When the Illiad starts, the reader quickly learns the selfishness of King Agamemnon. The muse tells the tale of how the Greeks captured two beautiful maidens named Chryseis and Briseis. Achilles being the great warrior he is, claims Briseis as his prize and he actually really likes her. Then, Chryses begs to get his daughter Chryseis back and offers Agamemnon a huge ransom.
However, the opposing party, who happens to be relatives of Arjuna, also believe that they are the rightful heir to the throne. In the opening scenes of The Bhagavad Gita, battle preparations are being made and the two armies are beginning to line up. It is then when Arjuna takes his chariot in between the two armies to see the faces of his enemies. When Arjuna see’s the faces of his family on the enemy side, he is extremely saddened and looses the will to fight. He says, “And I see forebodings of evil, Krishna.
The Iliad is the first great book, and the first great book about the suffering and loss of war. Homer, for reasons of his own, suppressed the truth about the Trojan war- in reality, the Greeks lost. Homer once said, “Men learn with difficulty… But they are deceived only too readily”. In The Iliad, two characters have the narrative urge, and something approaching a synoptic view of the scenes surging around them. Achilles sings stories of heroes' deeds in battle, and Helen embroiders scenes of fighting on an elaborate textile.
His anger stems from his contempt and jealousy against Agamemnon, a commander in the Achaean army, after he claims his prize in war, a woman named Chryseis. Although he has already claimed another woman as his own, Briseis, Achilles refuses to step down until he can obtain both women and restore his honor. Agamemnon's actions insult Achilles, and Chryseis is returned safely to her father only once he gives up Briseis. Achilles prays to his mother Thetis in hopes that she would convince Zeus to punish the Achean army. This is one of many examples of how Achilles, an honorable and feared man, indulges in selfish behaviors because of the power he holds above others and his fear of losing the glory he feels only he deserves.
From first view two epics “The Iliad” and “Bhagavad-Gita” looked so entirely different for me. Two completely distant cultures, huge difference in religion, Achilles, who has very little pity for man who will be dying because of his desire of revenge and Arjuna, who is opposing his fight for grief and compassion for people he is fighting against. What kind of motivation each of them has to fight? What glory and honor mean for Achilles and Arjuna? Can it be that they start their fights from different direction but end up fighting with the same purpose, for the same idea?