Rage of Achilles - Essay Example

While he has fortitude and courage, he lacks other ingredients of a great hero like magnanimity, a sense of justice, prudence, or temperance. This lack of temperance which is also referred to as Achilles’ rage is his most tragic of flaws that resulted in thousands of death for the Greeks when he left the battle with the Trojans (Homer & De Jong, 16). Because of his thirst for prizes and glory, he is not able to control himself when faced with defeat and humiliation, and he was not justified to leave the battle.

One can view his rage as a spectator as Achilles waits by his ships inexorably as the Argives die in their numbers. One could say that he acts as a spoilt brat who loves to create havoc that will satisfy his self-righteousness. Achilles is completely conscious of the impact his absence has, and he expresses his wish clearly to wait until the Trojans had reached Hellespont at which point he would engage the Trojans and Hector. It is only, when Patroclus dies that he is pushed to act, and from this angle, it is hard to see how the destruction of Trojan and Greek armies bolster any of the factions or, indeed, Achilles (Homer & De Jong, 18). The Iliad has no serenity, and even Achilles’ reconciliation with Priam is more resignation than acceptance. It is, therefore, simple to accuse Achilles of a lack of justification because, despite any will of biting one’s nose to spite the face, any behaviour in any way cannot be as wrong and unjustified as the action of Achilles (Homer & De Jong, 18).

However, even in judging Achilles’ actions as unjustified, one may be projecting his/her rage on Achilles (Homer & De Jong, 21). One can deflect their destructive tendencies in the same manner as a small-time, thief discounts his/her culpability through a comparison of their actions to charlatans who trick the elderly to give up their pension savings. Therefore, any study of the justification of Achilles’ rage needs introspection, instead of projection. It is vital to ask why anger that is destructive and fulfilling to the point of fulfilment is overwhelming on a desire for, say, food that nurtures.

Achilles, as a character, is an extremely complicated persona than a warrior who would allow their fellow soldiers to be slaughtered because he lost a girl to a person who was so self-serving that he was forced to sacrifice his children to be a warrior (Homer & De Jong, 22). He tells those who want him to take up his sword and shield and return to battle that a similar honour lays in wait for the brave and the coward. He also repeats these words in the underworld as he says to Odysseus that he prefers to become a slave on the earth than become a king of dead people. Fully knowledgeable of his fate of a glorious death, we could say that his anger has some degree of justification. However, can his actions, or those of anyone else for that matter, also be justifiable? In numerous ways, life can be perceived as a series of losses with how we deal with these losses defining us. While rage does seem to fulfil individuals, maybe, we are not too different to Achilles since we are willing to push the potential of our rage to block out life’s pains, especially the pains that make us face mortality (Homer & De Jong, 22).

Achilles is not able to separate himself from his lust for victory and glory, which is a caprice that fades as time moves on and comes to have no meaning in the grand scheme of things. Rather than treating the people he comes across with justice, he prefers to treat them as if they were chess pawns or even enemies (Homer & De Jong, 23). He judges their worth on the fact of whether they are of help to him in his achievement of false concepts of glory and victory, which, in truth, is a form of self-justification for his unjustifiable and barbaric behaviour. It is important to ask oneself whether if all men acted like Achilles we would live in an age, which was enlightened and sustainable free of unjustified suffering and vice. Achilles, therefore, fails to justify his hero status and is seen to be prone to a tragic and critical flaw. While he is a hero in the eyes of many, his actions here cannot be justified since heroes do anything that other people strive for.