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Chapter 15
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Song of Achilles, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Honor, Pride, and Legacy
Fate, Belief, and Control
Gender, Power, and Agency
Love, Violence, and Redemption
Selfhood and Responsibility
Summary
Analysis
They dock in Phthia the next day. The shore is full of onlookers, screaming Achilles’s name and “Aristos Achaion!” Patroclus thinks that this moment is when their lives will change—he understands the grandness that will always follow Achilles now that he’s chosen to be a legend. Peleus greets his son, saying that he’ll lead the army to glory and return triumphant. Patroclus knows Achilles won’t return, but Peleus doesn’t. Achilles is stunned but pleased by the crowd’s attention. He looks older, Patroclus thinks.
Achilles hasn’t even done anything and he’s already famous. The prophecies about his fame make him famous; fate is self-fulfilling, once Achilles chose to embrace it. Meanwhile, Peleus sees Achilles fate as purely a good thing. There is a dose of dramatic irony in Peleus lack of knowledge about the full prophecy, which through Peleus’s ignorance enhances the understanding that a glorious destiny is not necessarily a happy one.
Themes
Patroclus quickly realizes that Achilles is no longer just his. Everyone wants a piece of him. When he speaks to an onlooker, his vividness makes that onlooker heroic. Achilles defers most war matters to Phoinix, who will come to Troy with them, and he often asks Patroclus’s opinion. But Patroclus hangs in the back, silent. He sees the crowd’s dreams of triumph and knows that triumph is impossible for him and Achilles. He begins to hide in the palace, imagining Achilles’s potential deaths: a spear fight, a smashed chariot.
Achilles choice to embrace his fate has, regardless of his intentions, caused him to trade some of Patroclus’s love for the love of the Greek people. In many ways, Achilles’s relationship with his people is similar to his relationship with Patroclus: when Patroclus was younger, Achilles made him feel vivid and alive, too. But the relationship between Achilles and the public is a twisted one, because they’re rooting for him to kill people, and Patroclus wanted the opposite. Patroclus wanted the innocent, beautiful, lyre-playing Achilles. The people want the promised deadly killer.
Themes
Patroclus asks Achilles how he’s going to tell Peleus about the prophecy. Achilles says that he won’t—it would only hurt him to know. He reveals that back in Scyros, he asked Thetis not to tell Peleus, either. He also asked her to protect Patroclus after his death, and he admits, ashamed, that she said no. The fact that he asked comforts Patroclus, who has felt somewhat adrift. He doesn’t care that Thetis won’t protect him. He doesn’t plan to live after Achilles is gone.
Achilles gives his father a measure of happiness by keeping the knowledge of his fate from him. This is an example of the “bliss of ignorance”—a happiness founded on an unknown lack of control. Meanwhile, Patroclus’s love for Achilles is ever more tightly connected to death and violence, as his love is so all-encompassing that he has no interest in living once Achilles is dead.
Themes
Over the next six weeks, they continue to plan the war’s logistics. Peleus gives Achilles many supplies, including a charioteer, Automedon, a boy even younger than Achilles and Patroclus. He also gives Achilles an ash spear—it was a gift from Chiron. It would have taken Chiron weeks to sculpt, and Patroclus realizes that Chiron started it the day they left Pelion. Maybe he knew Achilles’s destiny. Or maybe he just assumed what would happen, the result of wisdom built up by watching student after student die: all trained in music and medicine, all “unleashed for murder.” But the spear is made from love, not bitterness—it’s specifically designed for Achilles and couldn’t suit anyone else. The point is sharp and deadly, but the wood itself is slippery, like a lyre.
Achilles and Patroclus are still teenagers, so the fact that a boy even younger than them is going to war again highlights the ways that Greek honor rewards heroism but undervalues life. The similarity of the spear to a lyre is interesting. Both are instruments: one for playing music, one for committing violence. Yet they both also only amplify what is inherent in Achilles: his innocence and ability to create beauty; his inhuman talent for dealing death. Achilles is always both of these things at once. That Chiron made the spear with love suggests an acceptance of everything Achilles is; an acceptance that Patroclus recognizes.
Themes
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Finally, the departure day arrives. The Phthians have a fleet of fifty ships, a whole city of wood. Achilles wears his purple cloak, and the crowd cheers about glory and gold. Peleus waves from shore. Achilles didn’t tell him about the prophecy, just hugged him. Patroclus hugs Peleus, too, and thinks that this is how Achilles will feel when he’s old. Then he remembers that he’ll never be old. The ships set sail, bound for Troy.
The size of this war—and the violence that will arise from it—is staggering. Phthia is sending an entire “city” worth of ships to fight. The crowd’s excitement indicates that the crowd feels that the honor and glory its warriors—and Achilles—are going to win will reflect back on all of them. Meanwhile, Patroclus is always having to remind himself of Achilles fate—he keeps forgetting and thinking that Achilles might live a normal life. The fact that Achilles embraces his purple cloak and the royal status it represents further marks how he has embraced his destiny and his role.
Themes
