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..]"("The Iliad," Book I) at first, Achilles' gives vent to his rage against Agamemnon, who asked him to give up his pray of war, Briseis, the daughter or Chryses. As a result of his impulsive nature, Achilles refuses to fight in the war and thus causes many losses in his army. His second wave of rage comes when his good friend Patroclus is killed in the fight by Hector. In his mad desire for revenge, Achilles eventually kills Hector, with the aid of the gods. The lesson that the Iliad teaches in humanity is obviously related to evolution of Achilles until the end of the poem. The "rage" that makes him almost inhuman in his thirst for revenge and the cruel way in which he performs it, literally butchering Hector's corpse, finally subsides at the end of the poem. The noble but wrathful Achilles becomes fully human when he gives Hector's body to his father Priam, for proper burial. His gesture is one of true and superior humanity. Achilles manages to overcome his wrath and learns how to forgive and how to...
The fact that the poem ends with the burial of Hector is indeed very significant. The Iliad thus teaches an important lesson about humaneness and war: the ancient ideal of valor and warring skills are counterbalanced by the importance of acting humanely in the midst of the cruelty of war. Without casting away the ideal of the perfect war hero, the Iliad merely proposes a more complex definition for this: Achilles learns to be not only wise, strong and cunning, but also humane. The fact that burial was a sacred practice for the Ancient Greeks only emphasizes the significance of Achilles' gesture, which represents the supreme respect for man.
Works Cited
Jones, P.V. "The Independent Heroes of the Iliad." Journal of Hellenic Studies 116 (1996): 108-18.
Lawall, Sarah N., Maynard Mack et al. The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces: The Western Tradition, Volume I: Literature of Western Culture Through the Renaissance. New York…
Works Cited
Jones, P.V. "The Independent Heroes of the Iliad." Journal of Hellenic Studies 116 (1996): 108-18.
Lawall, Sarah N., Maynard Mack et al. The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces: The Western Tradition, Volume I: Literature of Western Culture Through the Renaissance. New York W.W. Norton, 1997.
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