Frederick Len, Period 2, 4/27/23

Modern Mythology 2023: Literature Circle (Read up to Pg. 262)

Miller’s The Song of Achilles is a modern adaptation of Homer’s Iliad, told through the perspective of Patroclus, an awkward youth disowned by his father who grows to become Achilles’s lover. Patroclus’s journey is one brimming with dramatic irony and tragedy, even before the characters learn about the prophecy foretelling Achilles’s early demise. The Iliad is one of the most influential and popular works in Western culture, and every school child is taught about mythos of the Trojan War, including how the great warrior Achilles was killed by an arrow shot at his heel. We already know Patroclus’s romance with Achilles is prophetically short-lived, and the narrative constantly reminds the reader of how fragile Patroclus and Achilles' lives together are, always one godly act away from destruction. As a result of this tension, every act of defiance by the pair has much more weight than it might have had with a different story. In a way, Patroclus’s very existence and his relationship with Achilles is an act of defiance, especially against Achilles’s godly mother Thetis. Thetis wants her son to become a god, and she finds Patroclus’s humanity to be a disgrace to her son’s divinity.

As I was reading The Song of Achilles, I often found myself comparing it to Gardner’s Grendel. Both books transformed their established mythological stories through different lenses and perspectives. While Grendel deconstructed human philosophies through the eyes of a man-eating monster, The Song of Achilles quantified the contest between happiness and fame through a “forbidden love”. Both books also tackle relevant topics for their time periods. Grendel’s discussions put particular focus onto the 19th-20th century philosophy of existentialism, with Gardner using many of Jean-Paul Sartre’s ideas as talking points. In contrast, The Song of Achilles serves as a poignant analogy to the struggles of gay acceptance in society, with Achilles and Patroclus needing to hide their true feelings from their countrymen and even the gods themselves.