"Sing, O goddess, of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another. "
Homer, Iliad
What, according to you, is the significance of this introduction in The Iliad?
Why is the rage of Achilles so central to the story?
[tab]Achilles totally pulverizes the competition and at the end, not even his boss is higher than him for the bloodthirsty immortals who like the offerings of men. It is all one great feast of bloodsacrifice, but Homer lets you think it is a hero story. In this way, he can convince more men to offer themselves to swords of others so the vapors of their blood will rise to the jagged peak of the Olympus.[/tab]
I get it now, you were asking about rage and not about Achilles.
Rage is the center of all stories where rage figures.
Rage is like fire. Rage destroys all the rest. So in the en there is only the center and the outer cold cosmos and both are empty. The memory of rage reverberates. So Achilles lives on in the apparent silence of death. “What we do in life echoes in eternity” - Maximus
For some reason, the Iliad was composed by men who decided
to focus on the role of women as primary instigators of
the Trojan War and its beginnings; just as the Bible
and Milton’s Paradise Lost focus on Eve as the source
of the Lapsarian world, that Happy Sin carried by all
humankind, that could only be redeemed by Christ on
the cross.
The abduction of Helen by the Trojan Paris is seen as
the motivator for her husband Menelaus’ wish to destroy
the Trojans and get her back. You know the line from
Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus: "Is this the face that
launched a thousand ships/ And burnt the topless towers
of Ilium?
The Wrath of Achilles opens the epic when Chryseis, the slave
woman he keeps for himself in his tent is peremptorily taken from
him by Agamemnon who wants her for himself. It is only
the death of Achilles’ friend Patroclus that brings him back
into the war.
