The Song of Achilles
Told from the first-person perspective of young Patroclus, Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles (2012) reanimates the classical story of famous Achilles for today’s reader. As a student of literature, I certainly dabbled in the classics. The summer between graduating with my BA and starting graduate school I actually took a full year of Latin in six weeks; it was essentially Latin immersion. I studied the stories and heroes of classical myth, epics, and plays. So, of course, I know the famous first line of the Iliad translated: “Rage: Sing, Goddess, Achilles’ rage,/ Black and murderous, that cost the Greeks/ Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls/ Of heroes into Hades’ dark, / And left their bodies to rot as feasts/ For dogs and birds” (lines 1-6). The destructive love and grief of Achilles over the death of his beloved friend, Patroclus, is nearly as famous as Paris’s love of Helen. And yet, little comes down to us of the nature of their relationship, their daily lives, their fears, or their joys. In The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller manages to fill in all the human gaps in the ancient story by reconstructing the story of Achilles and Patroclus, their dedication to one another, the complicated nature of desire, and the tricky, tragic nature of destiny.
This novel includes many famous Greek heroes (Odysseus, Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Priam, for example), gods and goddesses (like Thetis and Apollo), and mythical characters (like the wise centaur Chiron). In this version, which begins when Patroclus and Achilles are children and leads to the inevitable fall of Troy, Miller’s mortal characters are complex and dynamic. Her immortal ones are unfeeling and detached. From the beginning, any student of the classics knows of the tragedy to which the tale leads. Miller’s writing is smooth and easy, the characters compelling, and through Patroclus’s first-person narration, the reader is compelled onward to the moment of death. And yet, as the reader—alongside the narrator—discovers death is not the end.
Miller’s novel explores universal human themes of love, desire, and loyalty alongside the classical obsessions with glory and honor. We see hubris at work and watch heroes suffer the tragic consequences of over-stepping confidence. Miler presents characters and events from some of the most fundamental Greek stories in a way that is entertaining, moving, and yes, educational, to the modern reader. Just as I wanted to pick up my copy of the Odyssey upon completing her more recent Circe, I headed to the bookshelf to find my copies of the Iliad and Aeneid after reading the final lines of The Song of Achilles. This renewal of interest in the classic stories, as well as the reminder that these old, old tales brim over with themes fundamental to human experience, is perhaps the true magic of Miller’s writing. While Miller’s characters and storytelling certainly move the reader, I find her regeneration of classic tales both important and enthralling. As we move further and further from liberal arts education in which all educated people know the classic stories (as well as the dead languages in which they were written), retellings like Miller’s become all the more important. The story of Patroclus and Achilles comes down through the millennia with themes of love and grief, and, of course, the short-comings of an individual’s ability to plan out his or her destiny. Madeline Miller brilliantly retells the tale of their love and loyalty, as well as their loss and death, in ways that are stirring and remind us that few human experiences are new; in fact, many of them have been told in one variation or another for thousands of years.
A Few Great Passages:
“Sometimes, as I watched him, I would catch sight of a square of ground where soldiers did not go. It would be near to Achilles, and if I stared at it, it would grow light, then lighter. At last it might reluctantly yield its secret: a woman, white as death, taller than the men who toiled around her. No matter how the blood sprayed, it did not fall on her pale-gray dress. Her bare feet did not seem to touch the earth. She did not help her son; she did not need to. Only watched, as I did, with her huge black eyes. I could not read the look on her face; it might have been pleasure, or grief, or nothing at all” (241).
“It was a strange time. Over us, every second, hung the terror of Achilles’ destiny, while the murmurs of war among the gods grew louder. But even I could not fill each minute with fear. I have heard that men who live by a waterfall cease to hear it—in such a way did I learn to live beside the rushing torrent of his doom” (251).
“Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of mortal inventions. ‘No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.’” (291).
“Odysseus inclines his head. ‘True. But fame is strange thing. Some men gain glory after they die, while others fade. What is admired in one generation is abhorred in another.’ He spread his broad hands. We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory. Who knows?’ He smiles. ‘Perhaps one day even I will be famous. Perhaps more famous that you [Pyrrhus, son of Achilles]” (363-64).
Bibliography:
Homer. Iliad. Translated by Stanley Lombardo. Hackett Publishing: Indianapolis, 1997.
Miller, Madeline. The Song of Achilles. Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers: New York, 2012.
