Achilles in Contrast to Hector: Homers Creation of Sympathy for the Tragic Hero - Essay Example

Achilles in contrast to Hector: Homer’s Creation of Sympathy for the Tragic Hero The tragic hero is a figure that is seen at the core of many of the ancient writings that still exist in the current era. The Illiad by Homer is an example of the tragic hero where the protagonists of the story are flawed and their end is the result of those flaws. However, in comparing the tragic heroes as written by Homer to the Aristotelian standards, the heroes written by Homer have a different characterization than that which is structured by Aristotle. In comparing Achilles to Hector, the best qualities of both work in balance to the best qualities of the other, thus perhaps the two figures equaling the full character of the tragic hero that is described by Aristotle. In examining the characteristics of both Achilles and Hector, the nature of the tragic hero is revealed for both flaws and skills, while not quite meeting the sympathetic characterizations developed by Aristotle. The tragic hero, as it has been recorded through written history, was extensively explored by both Aristotle and Homer. Homer’s sense of the tragic hero is a “sense of morality and fate” which act as the rudimentary qualities. Both Hector and Achilles carry these traits (Mishra 6). Mishra states that “According to Aristotle a tragic hero is a person of exalted position who, on account of some error or flaw, suffers a total reversal of fortune, arousing a feeling of pity or fear” (1). Hector fits into this framework because he commits an error of hubris. His pride leads into battle against Achilles and his arrogance puts his sword into the position to take the kill, destroying the life of the companion of Achilles, Patrocles, rather than Achilles. As his pride leads him to believe that he is strong enough to take the life of Achilles, he erroneously takes the life of someone far inferior to the great warrior and to himself. According to Nussbaum, the tragic hero in the eyes of Aristotle elicits empathy from the reader as the fall of the hero can be related to the tragic ends that occur in daily life. The evocation of the emotions of the reader is created because the hero is good and the audience feels for the injustice of his fall within the work (386). The concept of hubris then comes into play as the tragic hero must not believe in their essential goodness and invulnerability too much as this would be a sign of too much of the wrong kind of pride. This kind of arrogant pride, the belief that one is invulnerable, would be a source of hubris which is a great sin to the Greeks (Nussbaum 387). Therefore he must be less than perfect, yet desire to reach perfection through the righteousness and goodness of his actions. Achilles and Hector do not fully fall into the ranks of the tragic hero as described by Aristotle as Achilles believes himself invulnerable because of the protections put on him by his mother and Hector acts on his belief of his own skills where they are too superior to his opponent, even if unbeknownst to himself. The characterizations created by Homer were well developed and informed the reader of the type of individual character they were reading about which also had a sense of morality that gave applications of meaning to the text as the story was revealed. The characters were distinct, which is one of the reasons that Homer is considered “the first great genius of the Western literary tradition” (Cunningham and Reich 36). It is likely that the Iliad, along with his other most known work the Odyssey, were written from a long history of oral traditions that had passed the stories down to Homer. One of the more brilliant aspects of the poem is the way in which military movement and strategy was made accessible to the average reader by comparing elements of the military to every day concepts. One of these brilliant usages of metaphor and simile can be seen when the “massing of the Greek forces…is likened to a swarm of flies buzzing around pails of milk” (Cunningham and Reich 36). The Iliad has a specific subject and theme in which it explores the actions of both Hector and Achilles. Cunningham and Reich conclude that the subject of the Iliad is the anger that is expressed by Achilles. The theme of the poem is the weight of human responsibility (Cunningham and Reich 36). Achilles holds Hector responsible for the death of his companion and in his anger he takes out his wrath upon the one responsible for that death, which is Hector, despite the fault that lies with Patrocles. It is not about the justification of Hector for his actions, but that he must bear the consequences of them no matter how rightly he has acted. Cunningham and Reich state that “Although the setting of the Iliad is heroic, even mythic, the theme of human responsibility is universal” (36). Hector is responsible for the events and Achilles is the instrument who meets out the consequences. The anger of Achilles is a huge, glaring flaw in the personality of the character that acts as a point of reference from which all of the development of the story relies. The relationship between human action and consequences is made clear from the beginning and Achilles is set to fall hard and long as his actions reflect the unreasonable anger that he is feeling throughout the story. At this point it is clear that in contrast to the Judeo-Christian traditions, the Greek tradition of morality places human beings at the center rather than God. Through examining the human condition through the sometimes absurdity of the Greek gods and their separation from humans, the Greek tragedy works on the grounds of the human value system and discusses morality in reference to that framework (Nussbaum 36). The anger of Achilles, as it serves as the center of the story, is not controlled, influences, or affected by the gods. His anger is a flaw that suggests his hubris, eventually leading to his great downfall. Hector allows his desire for glory and heroism to cloud his good sense. When his father begs him to retreat, he refuses and takes an aggressive, offensive position within the battle as opposed to one of defense. He wishes to win, not to just survive; therefore his pride causes him to charge forward without fully knowing what he is charging towards. As Hector does nothing specifically wrong as he takes the life of Patrocles, the reader or audience also knows that he has created a tragic end to an almost innocent, thus he will have to pay the consequences. Meanwhile, while his affection for Patrocles has been made clear, Achilles also shows that he is quick to great anger and some of his failings are as a result of that anger (Alden 289). The use of their skills and their great power creates flaws for both Hector and Achilles, leading to their tragic ends. Aristotle believed that creating sympathy through the goodness of the hero was the way in which to evoke pity from the audience. Neither Hector nor Achilles displays an extreme sense of goodness. While both are righteous and act with great heroism, they do it for the purpose of their own glory more than for any other reason. This diverges from the Aristotelian point of view on the structure of the character of the tragic hero. However, Hector does fight for his home, thus making him somewhat more heroic than Achilles. The way in which sympathy is developed is through the extreme pain that the two heroes face. Hector faces the extreme mutilation of his corpse, and while he does not feel anything in this world, the human reaction to the mutilation of the body is strong and visceral. Achilles, on the other hand, has lost a beloved comrade, a man who might have been his lover and who held such importance to Achilles that his grief has led him to act in ways that would not be common for one soldier against another in battle (Alden 28). The great pain that is felt by both Hector and Achilles elicits the sympathy that is needed to create the reaction of the audience to them as tragic heroes. Where Hector fights for his home and for the honor of his family, Achilles fights for himself and for the glory that he believes he is due. He does not fight for Agamemnon’s cause, even though he participates in that king’s war. He fights for himself only, admired for his skill and his seeming invulnerability. Hector fights for glory, but it is in the defense of his home and to protect the undesirable actions of his brother in order to reinstate honor back to their home. He fights for himself, but he chooses causes to support rather than to fight only to win that heroic glory that he desires. Although Hector is the one who commits a crime that is an affront to Achilles, his crime was not done with intent. Achilles, on the other hand, falls to his anger and diminishes the honor of Hector through defiling and mutilating his body. Achilles does a sour deed in the eyes of the Greeks, thus placing him in an unsympathetic position. Hector also shows remorse for his actions, while although Achilles finds pity for Priam, Achilles shows little remorse for his actions. However, sympathy is evoked for Achilles because of the great pain that he expresses in losing his companion. Where Aristotle generalized that it was the goodness of the hero that provided the sympathy for the tragic hero in order to evoke pity from the audience, Homer clearly believed that great pain was the path towards sympathy. Because the Iliad is successful in creating this sympathy, it would seem that Homer found a way to take great hubris within heroic and prideful warriors and reduce it to pitiful and sympathetic emotions from which the great flaws and failures of the heroes could be understood and forgiven. Where Hector fights for the honor and freedom of his home, Achilles fights only for his own glory, not believing in the cause for which he fights. In the end, the deaths of both great warriors are the result of the hubris, but made sympathetic through the great pain that they suffer when tragedy comes into their lives. The writing of Homer provides for characterizations that defy Aristotle, but still find success. Works Cited Alden, Maureen J. Homer Beside Himself: Para-narratives in the Iliad. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print. Cunningham, Lawrence, and John J. Reich. Culture and Values: A Survey of the Humanities. Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2006. Print. Misra, Karuna S. The Tragic Hero Through Ages. New Delhi: Northern Book Centre, 1992. Print. Nussbaum, Martha C. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Print. Read More