Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles. Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.
The Song of Achilles: Introduction
The Song of Achilles: Plot Summary
The Song of Achilles: Detailed Summary & Analysis
The Song of Achilles: Themes
The Song of Achilles: Quotes
The Song of Achilles: Characters
The Song of Achilles: Symbols
The Song of Achilles: Theme Wheel
Brief Biography of Madeline Miller
Historical Context of The Song of Achilles
Other Books Related to The Song of Achilles
- Full Title: The Song of Achilles
- When Written: Around 2000/2001-2011
- When Published: September 2011
- Literary Period: Contemporary
- Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Tragedy
- Setting: Troy and ancient Greece (particularly the kingdom of Phthia, Mount Pelion, and the island of Scyros)
- Climax: Patroclus’s death at the hands of Hector
- Antagonist: Agamemnon, Thetis, Apollo, Pyrrhus, fate itself
- Point of View: First person
Extra Credit for The Song of Achilles
Achilles Heel. In Greek mythology, Achilles is famous for having only one vulnerable spot on his body: his heel. According to legend, Achilles’s mother dipped him in the River Styx to make him invincible, and it worked everywhere except for the heel where she held him. In some myths, Achilles would later die by being shot in his heel. Madeline Miller’s version of the story does not include this vulnerable heel; she felt that it stretched credibility to believe that someone could die via an injury to their heel, and Achilles’s supposed invincibility wasn’t part of Homer’s Iliad.
Stage Fright. Madeline Miller credits her background in theater with helping her focus the novel. She says that she wrote the story by getting into Patroclus’s skin and allowing his lived experiences to dictate the novel’s emotional beats, which she’s described as writing the story “from inside, rather than out.”