The Iliad, or the Poem of Force

[Hidden]

"The true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad is force. Force employed by man, force that enslaves man, force before which man's flesh shrinks away. In this work, at all times, the human spirit is shown as modified by its relations to force, as swept away, blinded, by the very force it thinks it could direct, as bent under the weight of the force it is subjected to. Those who had dreamed that force, thanks to progress, now belonged to the past, were able to see in the poem an historical document; those who can discern force, today as before, at the very center of human history, find in it the most beautiful, purest of mirrors."

~Simone Weil, L'iliade ou le poème de la force

This is the opening to Simone Weil's essay on the Iliad, Homer's famous work. After reading slowly and interspersedly over the course of about a year now, I have finally finished the poem myself. I find in it a very compelling image of man's relationship with war, with forces that extend catastrophically beyond himself. Simone Weil (whose essay I have not finished reading yet) has some very compelling things to say on it as well, and I particularly like this opening paragraph to her own essay, the Iliad, or the Poem of Force.

I'm curious what others have read in this work.

[Enchanted Rose]

I'll bump this, since in the Literature section, I don't think anyone cares about things like that.

The Iliad is one of my favourite pieces of literature, I read it 3 times in 9 months, I believe, though the last time was around a year ago, so my memory isn't excellent, but nonetheless, it's an interesting question to pose, so I'll give a stab at answering - as simply and briefly as I can.

The short answer is: no, I don't see it as a 'poem of force' - at least not primarily.

A good starting point is to think of the question in terms of the universe the Iliad inhabits.
One of the most striking things is that the Gods who rule over the mortals are presented as puerile and pathetic - bereft of any superior morality. Not only do their petty arguments amongst each other (particularly Hera, Poseidon and Zeus) dictate the course of action, but in their selfishness they lend arbitrary strength to their favoured hero. For example Zeus lends Hektor with enormous strength, and Athene often imbues Diomedes and others with almost superhuman powers. Furthermore, this necessarily means that they take away life equally randomly, sometimes bewitching the warriors on the field, but always meddling in the battle.

Thus, I would suggest that the Gods themselves bleed force away from the warriors. Success in battle isn't dependent on one's own forcible strength, but things as often as insignificant as prayers, or libations. Essentially, bufferring the egos of vain deities, and thus the individual is denied access to their inherent power.

My second point would be that force is not glorified in this poem, largely speaking. This relates to the possible anti-war stance that Homer espouses. Many Homeric similies are employed to juxtapose images of peacetime (in agriculture) with images of war. The men in combat are likened to "two lines of reapers" watching the "cut swathes drop showering" (Book 11). Ideas such as these explictly highlight the dualities of producing and destroying, and thus the unnaturalness of war. Moreover, Homer also uses numerous necrologies to expose the tragedy of warriors wasted in battle, and dying far from home.
As well as this, war is depicted as an unwelcome invasion into the city of Troy. I talked about this on another thread, I think, but this concept is shown most poignantly through Hektor and Achilleus' scene where Achilleus' chases Hektor around the walls of Troy. On his way around, Hektor passess all kinds of scenes of domesticism, including women washing their clothes, Andromache is unwittingly preparing for his return...and so on: he sees his homeland, the place he is trying to defend, ravaged by an unwanted force. Force is corrupting: it breaks up families, turns cities to ashes ,but peacetime is always viewed with a certain nostlagia.

Lastly, the character most readily associated with force, Achilleus, goes through an incredible transformation, where he no longer values kleos so highly. The first word of the Iliad is "menin" (wrath), so it is evident that the story will be somewhat concerned with Achilleus' highly charged emotions, and indeed, he's a prick for most of the story - railing against Agamemnon's unfair treatment of him. Yet, he shows a character development that forces us to question his values as a warrior. There's that fantastic scene in Book 24, where Priam comes to beg for Hektor's body back, and Achilleus concedes, and both of them weep together. I wont quote it, but there's a very good reverse similie which sublimates the roles of Priam and Achilleus. At this point, I would argue, Achilleus' actions take on an ethical significance, and he finally has to view himself in terms of others. That is to say, he can no longer prioritize military force as the dictating creed in his life.

My reading of this poem largely corroborates with that of Aristotle (in Poetics) who labelled this poem as one of "pathos", and I think this can be evinced through some of the points I've made here.


However, I can see how it can be argued the other way, also. An easy way is to look at the 'epic hero' in each of the epics, and see which values they embody.

Iliad (Achilleus)- militaristic prowess.
Odyssey (Odysseus)- priorities cunning over strength, culture, endurance.
Aeneid (Aeneas) - pietas.
Paradise Lost (Adam)- obedience and humility.

I find it interesting that the anti-hero in both the Aeneid (Turnus) and Paradise Lost (Satan) are associated with strength, and naturally, condemned for it, as this shows a shift from what qualities are valued in a hero.

But still, I think that even though the Iliad is hugely concerned with force, I think it's a lot more subtle than that.

Just a few ideas.

[Nevermore]

I like it. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, I've never been too partial about most of the classics. I don't know what it is about them that turns me off.

[Hidden]

"To define force--it is that x that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing."

I should have included this definition in my opening post. Actually, a great number of Enchanted Rose's views work directly along the same lines as Simone Weil's essay, so perhaps I misrepresented her idea originally. Your first contention can be used to illuminate this.

Originally Posted by Enchanted Rose

Thus, I would suggest that the Gods themselves bleed force away from the warriors. Success in battle isn't dependent on one's own forcible strength, but things as often as insignificant as prayers, or libations. Essentially, bufferring the egos of vain deities, and thus the individual is denied access to their inherent power.

This is precisely the issue--the force of the Iliad is not a force possessed by human individuals, nor even by the gods themselves; "it comes to seem just as external to its employer as to its victim." Even in that first paragraph provided, look at how Weil imagines the human soul in its relation to force--"as swept away, blinded, by the very force it thinks it could direct, as bent under the weight of the force it is subjected to." The force that is at the center of the Iliad is not only the force Agamemnon brings to bear on Achilles at the beginning of the play, but the force equally brought to bear upon Agamemnon as soon as the tide turns against the Achaeans. "The truth is, nobody really possesses it. [...] In this poem there is not a single man who does not at one time or another have to bow his neck to force."

Originally Posted by Enchanted Rose

My second point would be that force is not glorified in this poem, largely speaking. [...] this concept is shown most poignantly through Hektor and Achilleus' scene where Achilleus' chases Hektor around the walls of Troy. On his way around, Hektor passess all kinds of scenes of domesticism, including women washing their clothes, Andromache is unwittingly preparing for his return [...] Force is corrupting: it breaks up families, turns cities to ashes ,but peacetime is always viewed with a certain nostlagia.

Yes--those truly fleeting images of peace are what retain the poem's bitterness, what keep it from falling back into a dull monotony (e.g. portions of The Song of Roland). The use of the word "hero" in regards to force should not be taken to say that force is glorified--which seems odd, but does there exist a more conventional "hero" of that sense in the Iliad? Perhaps Hector comes closest (Weil actually argues Patroclus, but I'm not so sure), but how are we then to respond to how easily he is mowed down by Achilles after killing so many himself?

And while I agree that force is not glorified, neither is Homer fully capable of condemning it--he gives force its terrible due, much in the spirit of Robert E. Lee: "It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it." He could not do otherwise and remain true to the subject.

Originally Posted by Enchanted Rose

Lastly, the character most readily associated with force, Achilleus, goes through an incredible transformation, where he no longer values kleos so highly. The first word of the Iliad is "menin" (wrath), so it is evident that the story will be somewhat concerned with Achilleus' highly charged emotions, and indeed, he's a prick for most of the story - railing against Agamemnon's unfair treatment of him. Yet, he shows a character development that forces us to question his values as a warrior. There's that fantastic scene in Book 24, where Priam comes to beg for Hektor's body back, and Achilleus concedes, and both of them weep together. I wont quote it, but there's a very good reverse similie which sublimates the roles of Priam and Achilleus. At this point, I would argue, Achilleus' actions take on an ethical significance, and he finally has to view himself in terms of others. That is to say, he can no longer prioritize military force as the dictating creed in his life.

Indeed, there is that one book (perhaps two, if one counts the funeral games of Patroclus) where Achilles regains his humanity, retrieves his human soul from the grip of force as it were. It's a very powerful scene, where he and Priam both recognize each other as humans in the vice grip of fate where they are both held.

But the 'transformation' will not last; Achilles recognizes its frailty even as he cautions Priam not to be impatient for his son's body, lest tempers flare and Achilles kills him then and there. The Iliad leaves us on the brink of battle; Achilles will rejoin the fight, and there Achilles is the very force of war in a way that Ares is never portrayed in the Iliad. I cannot see that last scene as any lasting triumph over force, particularly given what we already know of Troy's fate.

Originally Posted by Enchanted Rose

My reading of this poem largely corroborates with that of Aristotle (in Poetics) who labelled this poem as one of "pathos", and I think this can be evinced through some of the points I've made here.

You have me on Aristotle, though "pathos" does not seem an inappropriate response to much of the Iliad.

Originally Posted by Enchanted Rose

However, I can see how it can be argued the other way, also. An easy way is to look at the 'epic hero' in each of the epics, and see which values they embody.

Iliad (Achilleus)- militaristic prowess.
Odyssey (Odysseus)- priorities cunning over strength, culture, endurance.
Aeneid (Aeneas) - pietas.
Paradise Lost (Adam)- obedience and humility.

I find it interesting that the anti-hero in both the Aeneid (Turnus) and Paradise Lost (Satan) are associated with strength, and naturally, condemned for it, as this shows a shift from what qualities are valued in a hero.

Indeed, an intriguing view, though I would have to look at it more fully before accepting it as an "easy" categorization.

Originally Posted by Enchanted Rose

But still, I think that even though the Iliad is hugely concerned with force, I think it's a lot more subtle than that.

I wouldn't put it as a question of subtlety. Force can be a very subtle thing; or rather, force is never subtle, but we have become very good at not seeing it. "Those who had dreamed that force, thanks to progress, now belonged to the past, were able to see in the poem an historical document; those who can discern force, today as before, at the very center of human history, find in it the most beautiful, purest of mirrors."

Originally Posted by Enchanted Rose

Just a few ideas.

Very stimulating ideas indeed.

*all quotations taken from Simone Weil's "The Iliad, or the Poem of Force" unless otherwise cited.

Now for my own question(s): what of fate and free will in the Iliad? What of all the screwed up causal relationships, where it's never entirely sure what god, person, or other force pushed the pieces into place? What of all the scenarios where the Iliad says, "and right here, everything could have gone differently"?

[darkisaac]

The definition Weil offers on force is much too ambiguous to ever be useful beyond the whimsical musings of a confused individual; and like Enchanted Rose I too disagree with the Iliad being a poem of Force.

Look at the very definition you give:

To define force--it is that x that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing."

Now I don't know if this is due to a bad translation, or that Weil is truly so absent minded as to give us a definition which could encompass anything and nothing at once, but the fact is that she is no closer to finding the truth of the Iliad than I would be if I claimed that it was a poem of carrots.

What is the thing she refers to when defining force?

Based on what you've said, it leads me to believe that Weil (and by association, you) has missed the innate beauty of The Iliad.

The fact is that there is no "Force" in the Iliad; there is only the combating wills and passions of the opposing sides, there is only the sight of war, and how in war, the truth of human nature emerges.

I personally believe The Iliad to be a poem of humanity; a poem of emotion, flaws, suffering, betrayal, passion, jealousy, and all that encompasses the very fabric of the human soul.

The God's in Homer's poem are simply exaggerated representations of human emotions (After all, being Gods they don't need to restrain their emotions, they can act on them as they please), as are the heroes. The Iliad is not a poem of Force, rather it is a mirror of life, of the subtle and intricate human idiosyncrasies that make up our very being.

The Iliad is a poem of emotion.

In that, I wholeheartedly agree with ER, because to see the Iliad as anything but a representation of pathos, to see it as anything but a palette depicting the wide spectrum of the human soul, is to miss the core of the Iliad.

[Square Ninja]

havent actually read the illiad

just the odyssey

[Hidden]

I am disappointed that I so clearly misrepresented Weil's essay, as displayed by the responses of two readers now who have obviously thought the matter out. I tried to rectify this somewhat in response to Enchanted Rose, and will attempt to do so on certain other points brought up by darkisaac.

The definition I believe to be well-enough preserved in translation. The original French is, "La force, c'est ce qui fait de quiconque lui est soumis une chose." A more literal reading would be "Force is that which makes anyone submitted to it into a thing."

The definition itself I find very important, and I believe meaning can be drawn from it. Force is the ability to take the human being, ideally an active agent of its own volition, and make of it merely an object that can be acted upon and manipulated--it turns human beings into soldiers, prisoners, cowards, and, taken to its most literal end in the Iliad, corpses. But it is not something that just exists 'somewhere out-there' in a vaguely starwarsesque sense. I actually think you (darkisaac) identify this force accurately in the Iliad where you state:

Originally Posted by darkisaac

there is only the combating wills and passions of the opposing sides, there is only the sight of war

The Iliad is certainly a poem of humanity, perhaps at both its best and its worst (and I do not believe the best is limited to those scenes of domestic peace or the worst limited to war). But, as part of this, it is a poem that shows how far human beings can be distorted by force, whether they imagine themselves as its possessors or victims. Too many are cut down in this poem without ever reaching their potential as human beings to ignore this, while some few are able to become something more (but how far can we call a character such as Achilles human?).

As I state to Enchanted Rose, we should not take Simone Weil's opening paragraph to say that force is glorified in the Iliad. It is not. But neither is it ignored, nor cheaply vilified, and it is at the center of almost all action that takes place in the poem, whether amongst the gods or humans.

And as I suggested in Machiavelli's The Prince, Simone Weil equally tries to capture the moral implications of subjecting human beings to the type of force we see in the Iliad, and she certainly does not discount those scenes in the Iliad that reference a human life not subject to war's brutality. She speaks of the poem's "bitterness" in this sense:

Originally Posted by Simone Weil

It is this which makes the Iliad a unique poem, this bitterness, issuing from its tenderness, and which extends, as the light of the sun, equally over all men. Never does the tone of the poem cease to be impregnated by this bitterness, nor does it ever descend to the level of a complaint. Justice and love, for which there can hardly be a place in this picture of extremes and unjust violence, yet shed their light over the whole without ever being discerned otherwise than by accent.

Hopefully this gives a fuller picture of Weil's essay. But I would also like to note that my own reading of the Iliad is not limited to a regurgitation of Weil's views; a question I find very compelling in the Iliad I have put at the very end of my previous post, if anyone finds it of interest. Of course, posters should continue to voice their contentions with any of the issues addressed (or not) already.

EDIT: I currently do not have English copies available of either the Iliad or Simone Weil's essay (which includes relevant excerpts from the Iliad). I have a French copy of the essay on .pdf, but as translating is still somewhat of a task for me, I have to cut down on direct references.

Originally Posted by Square Ninja

havent actually read the illiad

just the odyssey

havent actually read the odyssey

just the iliad

I look forward to having the time (...sometime) to read the Odyssey; I've only been introduced to it through second-hand description.

[darkisaac]

Ok, I actually misspoke a bit in my last post.

Given your revised definition of "Force", I cannot possibly disagree with you, after all it is impossible to say that there is no "Force" in the Iliad.

However, my issue is not so much the existence of said "Force", my issue is the fact that you (or more accurately, Weil) give a statement that is meaningless. Unless you define what the Force is, the statement is useless.

Because your definition of Force has two undefined variables, it is basically saying that Force is a relationship between two things in which one is affected by the other.

Then, by your definition of "Force" one can say that every work of the arts (literature,poetry, etc.) is a work of "Force", after all, in any book or play or poem there is a relationship between things that act upon each other, the only circumstance in which Force wouldn't exist would be when there is only one variable, in a singular point, basically in a universe with no dimensions, which in terms of literature, is basically impossibe.

I define said "Force" as emotion, and in doing so, I reach meaning. Because what truth has Weil really uncovered in her statement that the Iliad is a poem of Force?

Anyone coud tell you that. It is no different than saying the Iliad has characters; who cares? Of course it'll have characters! And of course it'll have "Force"! After all, these are inherent parts of any work (nay anything), what is the point of describing generic parts of a work?

It's only by discovering what the Force is, that anyone can reach any meaningful truth about the Iliad, or any work for that matter. The vagueness of the statement renders it meaningless.

[Hidden]

"Those who can discern force, today as before, at the very center of human history, find in [the Iliad] its most beautiful, purest of mirrors."

Let us take that as Simone Weil's justification for considering force a worthwhile topic for the Iliad to address. It does not seem unreasonable to assume that Michel Foucault had a similar justification in mind for addressing this same force in "Discipline and Punish", or Machiavelli in "The Prince". Of course, force takes on a different form in each of these works (in Foucault, it is disciplinary; in Machiavelli, it is political; in Weil, it starts with war), but I believe Weil's opening definition gives a compelling and important point of origin to all of these.

Of course, as you note, if we remain only at this point of origin, the term "force" has no meaning to our actual lives. But here you must forgive me for transcribing only Weil's opening paragraph; in the pages that follow, she does engage how this force is manifested in the Iliad and in our own lives.

Originally Posted by Simone Weil

When [this force] is exercised to its furthest end, it makes man into a thing in the most literal sense, for it makes him into a corpse. Before there was someone there, and, an instant later, there is no one. It is an image the Iliad never tires of painting for us:

...the horses
made their empty chariots resonate across the paths of war,
in mourning their conductors without reproach. Them laying upon the
ground, dearer to the vultures than to their spouses.

Originally Posted by Simone Weil

The force that kills is a cursory, crude form of force. How much more varied in its processes, how much more surprising in its effects, is the other force, the force that does not kill; that is to say the force that does not kill yet. It certainly will kill, or maybe it is going to kill, or it may just as well only be suspended above the being that at any instant it could kill; in all of these ways it changes the human being into a stone.[...]

The man disarmed and naked before him who carries a weapon becomes a corpse before ever being touched.[...]

[Achilles] spoke; the other's knees and heart failed him;
he let loose the spear and fell to a sitting position, his hands slack(?)*,
his two hands.

These are just two of the earliest and simplest instances Weil draws from the Iliad; she goes on to discuss conditions arising from power that are far more complex and far-reaching.

Originally Posted by Simone Weil

If all are destined from birth to suffer violence, this is a truth to which the minds of men are closed by the empire of circumstances. The strong are never absolutely strong, nor are the weak absolutely weak, but both ignore this. They do not believe themselves part of the same species; the weak do not regard themselves as alike to the strong, nor are they regarded as such. Those who possess force move through an environment without resistance, with nothing in human matter outside of themselves nor of nature to spark between the impulse and the act the brief moment where thought lodges itself. Where thought has no place, justice and prudence have none. This is why armed men act harshly and madly. Their weapons bury themselves in the disarmed enemy at their knees; they triumph over a dying man in describing to him the outrages to which his body will be submitted; Achilles cuts the throats of a dozen adolescent Trojans on Patrocles' pyre as naturally as we cut flowers for a tomb. In using their power, they never imagine that the consequences of their acts will bend them in turn. When one can cause an old man to fall silent, tremble, and obey with a word, does one think that the curse of a priest has importance in the eyes of the divinities? Does one abstain from taking the woman beloved of Achilles, when one knows that she and he can do nothing but obey? Is Achilles, when he is happy to watch the miserable Greeks flee, capable of thinking that this flight, which will continue and end according to his wishes, will cause the loss of his friend's life and his own? It is thus that those to whom force is lent by fate perish for counting it too great.

Weil goes into the text of the Iliad and finds a world in the implacable grip of force, which bows every human (and most gods) to it in turn; but it is also a world that values those things that are most fragile, and so recognizes the depth of its loss.

"She cried to her household servants with the beautiful hair
to put by the fire a grand tripod, to have there
a hot bath for Hector when he returned from combat.
Naive girl! She did not know that far from all hot baths
the arms of Achilles had brought him down, by cause of Athena with the green eyes."

Weil argues that, even as force is the Iliad's true subject and center, it is this recognition of what is lost to force that gives the poem a human meaning. Both Enchanted Rose and darkisaac hit upon emotion as necessary to the Iliad's meaning, and certainly this is true, but I think if we do not give force its terrible due too much is left out and the power of the poem is lost.


*all citations are from the French of Simone Weil's essay, translated by myelf. The question mark in one of the quotations above marks an uncertain translation of the word "tendues".

[Hidden]

Double post bump, but there's a question about the actual poem (as opposed to Simone Weil's essay about the poem) that I want to ask.

How do we deal with Hector's death? How, on a larger level, do we deal with the fall of Troy to the invading Acheans?

[Enchanted Rose]

What exactly do you mean by that?

I'd imagine almost everyone knows about the Fall of Troy before reading the Iliad, and if not, there are numerous instances in the poem where Zeus reflects, and (sadly) acknowledges that fate has decreed Troy to fall. We're always being reminded of what has to happen before it does, taking away any surprise. There's that scene where Zeus gets out his scales before the showdown between Hector and Achilles...we thus know what's inevitable, I suppose it just makes his eventual death more painful and tortured: we know, and Hector knows he will die: anything he does is just buying a few more minutes of his life.
It's the futility of individual human effort is against the divine, and its quite heartbreaking to see his strength turned into cowardice, as he tries to run away from his fate.

Yet Hector's death is problematic, because he is the character we'd most easily label as 'heroic'. Achilleus is too petulant, but Hector's valour has considerable substance: he is the protector of an entire civilization. Hector doesn't appear in any of the legends preceeding the Iliad, so it's likely that Homer invented him, (and his name meaning 'defender'), and held a fondness for him. It's also obvious that Zeus holds him in very high esteem too, and lets him go very reluctantly. On the other hand, Paris, whose folly instigated the war, survives. The real shock is the defilement of Hector's corpse: at this point I think Achilles really alienates himself from our sympathy, and his anger becomes absolutely irrational. But interestingly enough, Achilles can only redeem himself as he comes to grant respect for Hector.

The Iliad ends on quite a strange note - it's almost deceptive because the body of Hector is returned to Troy, and a period of grieving is granted - so we have a temporary stalemate, but the worst is still to come: the brunt of the consequences are seen in the Aeneid. Only then can one appreciate how horrific the Achaean invasion is. It's extremely sad - with Priam's brutal murder, with Aeneas loosing his wife in the flames as he evacuates the city etc.

Also, it's important to be mindful of the fact that the Achaean invasion is dishonorable. It's not really only to recover Helen - but it's very much for booty (literally women and mainly for wealth), which can be seen in the opening section of the Iliad, and the excessive plundering of the Achaeans. When we see how materialistically minded they are, we quickly loose sympathy for their cause.

...
What do you think?

[darkisaac]

Originally Posted by Hidden

Double post bump, but there's a question about the actual poem (as opposed to Simone Weil's essay about the poem) that I want to ask.

How do we deal with Hector's death? How, on a larger level, do we deal with the fall of Troy to the invading Acheans?

When you ask how we 'deal' with these events, I am not sure what you mean. There's not much to 'deal' with, after all there's nothing we can do about Hector's death, or Troy's fall for that matter, because they're just plain facts- it is like me asking how we would deal with the sky being blue, there's nothing to 'deal' with, it just is. Now, you can ask why the sky is blue, you can seek to understand reasons and causes.

So I will assume, and I hope I'm right, that you mean how we react, or what meaning we find in these events. In order to answer, I will have to first give my own view of Hector's death (And the fall of Troy, by association).

I have always seen Hector's death as a huge injustice; after all, Homer makes it painfully clear that the doomed Trojan hero is simply a victim of the Gods' will: their whimsical nature being his condemnation.

Hector is painted as the noblest of all the heroes of the Iliad, and he has been regarded throughout history as a paragon of justice and courage (I am not so sure I completely agree with such a generous view of Hector,after all, Homer makes it explicitly that he is not devoid of flaws, such as cowardice; though I wil admit that out of all the Iliad's heroes, Hector could be regarded as the most noble).

I believe that Hector's death is a plot device used by Homer in order to portray the supremacy of the Gods, because in doing so, he depicts the arbitrary fate of men. By showing that even the greatest of warriors is susceptible to the capricious nature of the Olympians, he shows that we are but simple pawns in the Gods' game of chess, and because the Gods are no more than hyperbolic representations of emotional extremes, I believe that Homer is ultimately seeking to show that we as humans are controlled by our emotions.

Hector's death, the sacking of Troy, and everything that happens is a result of our emotions driving our actions.

Just my two cents, what do you opine?

(NOTE: I wrote this really quickly because I have to go at the moment, so I might be back to expand on this & edit my post)

[Square Ninja]

Originally Posted by darkisaac

Hector's death, the sacking of Troy, and everything that happens is a result of our emotions driving our actions.

Just to clarify for anyone reading, it seems like Homer is trying to say that unbridled emotion driving human action is bad.

Then again I come to this conclusion through the powers of cultural osmosis, so take it with a bit of salt.

[Hidden]

I think both of these responses get to the heart of the matter quickly, especially for Hector--he is, in an evasive but powerful sense, our hero, and we invest our hope in him almost the same as do the Trojans. He is the one we count on to protect -his wife, his child, his people and city- effectively everything seen as worth protecting in the poem. And he seems the only man who can do it--he knows the ways of battle, of 'turning behind the shield'; he knows what it is to be a dutiful son, husband, and father; and he knows how to treat people with courtesy and kindness, even Helen who feels she receives and deserves none. In all, he knows what it is to be a full human being, and he is charged with protecting that role, even the very possibility of that role, against the inhumanity of this war.

But he ultimately fails in this. Because nothing of what Hector stands for can stand against the overwhelming, destructive power that is Achilles in battle. And so we are forced to watch as the best of humanity is cut down by brute force. So when I ask, "how do we deal with this", I 'm asking how we can move on in a world such as the Iliad's where everything we find worth valuing can be overthrown by force, be that a man with a sword or a capricious god or whatever other excuse given to the event--all just different masks for the same destructive movement. How can we find value in a world that kills off men such as Hector, that does not give what they are protecting even a chance at survival?

That is my main question; now to turn to a few specific points from Enchanted Rose and darkisaac.

Originally Posted by Enchanted Rose

I'd imagine almost everyone knows about the Fall of Troy before reading the Iliad, and if not, there are numerous instances in the poem where Zeus reflects, and (sadly) acknowledges that fate has decreed Troy to fall.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe I remember Zeus being in on the decision to bring the fall of Troy--he pointedly reminds Hera that he may hereafter take any of her cities without interference, for it is her will that Troy be utterly destroyed.
There is also the scene, very early on, when both sides have nearly reached a truce that will supposedly pacify the Achaeans and preserve Troy--but Hera will have none of it, and so persuades Zeus to make a Trojan archer take an ill shot and cause warfare to erupt again. 'Fate' is a shadowy figure in the Iliad.

Originally Posted by Enchanted Rose

It's the futility of individual human effort is against the divine

Is it necessarily the divine? I state above that it is the force of war as embodied by Achilles (himself only partially human), while darkisaac asserts that the gods are simply exploded reflections of unbridled human emotion. How are we supposed to take Zeus with his golden scale?

Originally Posted by Enchanted Rose

Also, it's important to be mindful of the fact that the Achaean invasion is dishonorable.

At the point we enter into the Iliad, nine years into the war, how much of a difference do you think this really makes?

Originally Posted by darkisaac

I have always seen Hector's death as a huge injustice; after all, Homer makes it painfully clear that the doomed Trojan hero is simply a victim of the Gods' will: their whimsical nature being his condemnation.

And yet, why is Hector the last Trojan standing outside the city walls when Achilles, already lead off on a false chase by Apollo, comes at last upon Troy?

Originally Posted by darkisaac

I believe that Hector's death is a plot device used by Homer in order to portray the supremacy of the Gods, because in doing so, he depicts the arbitrary fate of men. By showing that even the greatest of warriors is susceptible to the capricious nature of the Olympians, he shows that we are but simple pawns in the Gods' game of chess, and because the Gods are no more than hyperbolic representations of emotional extremes, I believe that Homer is ultimately seeking to show that we as humans are controlled by our emotions.

Interesting. But where does Achilles fit into this?

Originally Posted by darkisaac

Hector's death, the sacking of Troy, and everything that happens is a result of our emotions driving our actions.

And what does Homer seem to suggest should drive our actions? Where are all the level-headed, thinking characters in the Iliad?