Unit 3
   English 201: 
  Masterpieces of Western Literature
.Unit 3 Reading Course Reading Entry Page
Introduction Background .Explication Questions Review

Introduction:

Mortality: The theme most prominent in this last unit of The Iliad is the illustration of mortality.  Scores of Trojan fighters are graphically torn apart & bleed to death.  The champions, Sarpedon, PAT, & HK perish.  19th & 20th c. Existentialism shares Homer's outlook on mortality.  Both outlooks claim that the most important feature of human life is our self-conscious recognition that it ends.  Paradoxically, death is the most important thing in life.  Not exactly biological death itself, but the idea of it; the idea that we each have a finite amount of time to live.  The inference is that we should self-consciously choose how to spend that time, instead of rather unconsciously drifting through life or allowing other people (parents) or institutions to decide how we should live.

     Unlike 19th & 20th c. Existentialists, Homer does not imagine that one could choose from many different ways of life.  Or if there are a few choices (certainly different for women than men), underlying them all is a simple morality.  The first requirement is courage.  Life is a battle against death.  Death does not always come from a sharp edge.  We do not see many minor characters in The Iliad.  We will see more such characters in the Odyssey.  These characters whine about the fact that life is trouble.  They do not really live a human life.  When OD's men are re-transformed from hogs into men again, they want nothing so much as to remain hogs "who rut & slumber on the earth" (10.259, 429).  To be fully human requires courage.
The Abduction of Persphone by Hades
What about all the violence in The Iliad?  Do we have to knock someone else down to prove our courage & to feel alive?  Yes & no.  This is literature & literature moves back & forth from the world of dreams & fantasy to reality.  This is part of the problem that Homer illustrates.  In the world of the id, the pleasure principle wants raw & total power.  It wishes to destroy any opposition to what it wants; & it simply wants what it wants.  Carrying such infantile feelings over into the world governed by the reality principle invites tragedy.  Courage operates self-reflectively as well as in regard to adversaries.  OD will be the model in regard to self-control.  Several times he is characterized as a man of iron because he has an iron will power to control his emotions (the "I want" voice).
     If we have the courage to control our emotions (including the fearful & evasive denial of death), our decision about how to spend our mortality should be concerned with honor.  Chronos (time) is infinite.  There is no objective answer about what is worthwhile.  Every objective project is doomed to be forgotten.  The courageous person can only choose to live an honorable life because it is inherently attractive.  Such a life reduces guilt & regret.  It also enhances the likelihood of pride, of looking back on accomplishments with some measure of contentment, feeling that you have done as well as you could.  I hope you find it interesting that when OD meets the shades of heroes in the underworld (AG, AK, PAT, Aias), who all regret the loss of the body & with it the loss of doing something new or doing something different -- we do not meet HK.  Because we imagine that HK would not have such regrets.  His life is truly heroic.

Endurance: For those without much inclination for reflection & philosophic analysis, OD gives this simple advice:
19.248  So many die, so often, every day,
            when would soldiers come to an end of fasting [mourning]?
            No, we must dispose of him who dies
            & keep hard hearts, & weep that day alone.
            . . . So that we may . . .
...........be tough soldiers

AK echoes OD's wisdom, telling Priam:
24.630    Tears heal
             nothing . . . .
  ...........This is the way the gods ordained the destiny of men. . . .
24.658    Endure it, then.
24.661    await some new misfortune to be suffered.

Civilization:We do not witness the destruction of Troy (the polis, the city) in The Iliad, but we know that it is doomed, largely because men like AK cannot control themselves.  It is easier to kill someone else than to control rage.  We will consider the other problems for civilization that The Iliad identifies in our Review for this unit.

Desire:In the last book Homer bluntly identifies the human problem:
24.33     Alexandros
             made his mad choice . . .
             he praised
             a third [power], who offered ruinous lust

Here at the end "ruinous lust" should remind us of the beginning:
1.2        Ak's anger, doomed & ruinous

Click on the next section: Background above.