In a couple of prior posts, I have explored the importance of μηνιν, the word that opens the Iliad and describes the kind of rage that Achilles was experiencing. In my first post, I explored the existential feeling of this type of rage and provided some personal examples of moments when some seemingly trivial issue felt like the time to take a stand. In my second post, I proposed the movie of Dazed and Confused and Texas football as modern avatars for understanding the "pre-state" and "warrior society" that serve as the contexts for the Iliad.
The Iliad is primarily about the development of Achilles as a coming of age story (or bildungsroman as my daughter Brooke would say) where the word μηνιν sets up as the gauge of his spiritual journey. This view is not commonly held. The result is that readers often incorrectly think that the Iliad is about other areas that really serve as stage props, such as Fate, the Gods and Goddesses, shields and spears and speech-making. What makes it difficult to see the Iliad as a coming of age story?
Coming of age stories generally have to do with adolescents. In adolescence, we make important first steps to differentiate our singular selves from family and society. The suddenly closed doors of teenagers is a sign of this personal cocooning as we dismember and remember our real selves. Lasting damage, showing up as people pleasing and cowardice, can occur when teens are deprived of this developmental phase. But adolescence is not the only period where we make significant steps to differentiate ourselves. Coming of age moments, like those of Job in the Bible, can occur at any time.
Yet there is a reason that we typically locate this process in adolescence - it is a period of heightened sensitivity. This heightened sensitivity characterizes Achilles and is the nuance of the word μηνιν. This sensitivity sets up the conflict between him and Agamemnon. Readers, and even scholars, view his μηνιν or "rage" as an example of how trivial things can have terrible consequences. This interpretation marginalizes a universal work of defining oneself into an archaic piece on morality and society.
By viewing his "rage" as a case of "making a mountain out of a molehill," Achilles is seen as a "monster" or a "hero." His athletic, physical and military capacities become defining characteristics of the "monster" or "hero" rather than simply props to highlight the dynamism and sublimity of his personal and deeply human growth. The Iliad's things, people, Gods and Goddesses remain static, while Achilles undergoes significant change.
The other narrative that plagues readers is that Homer has written an anti-war work. Such a reading simply does not work, but I think this is increasingly popular so as to suit current narratives and sensitivities. Over and over again, Homer gloriously outlines the thrill of the chase in war and the agony of war's injury and defeat with exquisitely beautiful natural similes. The Greeks, of which Homer was one, are repeatedly called "war-loving." In this framework, he is saying that for better or worse, this is what we do. We fight. We love. We die. Nature (no subjectivity) and the Gods and Goddess (no mortality) can't experience life like we do. To feel and to actually love the sensation of "kill or be killed" (give glory to the other or get it for yourself) sets up the sensation of what's at stake in becoming our fullest selves and in this sensation is the most sublime beauty.
Emergence from Achilles' psychological "cocoon" occurs when Priam kisses Achilles hands. Achilles is affected with wonder and asks himself "Can he (Priam) be a God?" Achilles is overcome by the beauty and the power of an action so unnatural as for a father to kiss the hands that have murdered his own offspring. Achilles pays him the highest compliment, that Priam has "a heart of iron" - a description used repeatedly about Achilles. Achilles' deep admiration creates an ability to abide as Priam and Achilles weep together - Priam for his son and Achilles for his father and his lover Patroclus. Achilles heart fulls and suddenly shifts. It heals. Achilles moves fully into his own, culminating in them mirroring each other with an expansive love physical, emotional with spiritual with poignancy driven by its evanescence. And we all weep with them for the beauty and the pain of our mortal selves.
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