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Chapter 19
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
When they land the ships, Odysseus tells Achilles that the Phthian camp is at the furthest end of the beach, far from the other kings. Patroclus knows that Odysseus assigned the spots himself. It’s the best camp by far, shady and quiet. After setting up, they return to the central camp and run into Achilles’s cousin, the enormous Ajax, who behaves stiffly toward them. Patroclus knows that if Achilles weren’t Aristos Achaion, Ajax would have that title. Patroclus gazes at the Trojan walls, which were built by Apollo himself. No one could ever climb them, he thinks.
Odysseus always has ulterior motives for his actions. It’s possible to see his choice to give Achilles this particular camp in multiple ways: 1) he’s trying to help Achilles by giving him the best camp; 2) he gives Achilles an out of the way camp to help hide Achilles and Patroclus’s relationship; 3) he’s doing these things to help Achilles to gain Achilles trust; 4) he’s trying to separate Achilles and Agamemnon to keep the peace; 5) he’s trying to keep Achilles outside the center of the camp to keep him isolated. It’s also possible Odysseus is trying to do all of these things. Regardless, Odysseus is always in control. Ajax’s response to Achilles shows that for the Greeks honor is a competition; one person having it means another doesn’t.
Themes
That night, Agamemnon calls the first war council meeting for the Greeks. All the kings sit by rank, Achilles in front. The kings debate whether or not they should be diplomatic and send a parley to the Trojan king, Priam. Menelaus supports this, Diomedes is against it, and Odysseus sees both sides: diplomacy makes them seem like heroes, not villains, but raids are also a good way to start a war, and more profitable. Agamemnon agrees: they’ll raid first. Raids are typical warfare; you attack the lands around a city, kill resistant civilians, capture the rest. Those who escape rush to the palace, which grows crowded, so the gates eventually have to open.
Honor and rank is always present in war, even at the meetings. Meanwhile, as the kings sit based on their rank or honor, they debate and choose tactics that target innocent civilians. This war was started with the idea of defending Greek honor to bring back the "stolen" Greek woman, Helen. But the Greek’s focus is not on diplomacy, but maximizing wealth no matter the destruction.
Themes
Patroclus hopes that Achilles will object and say that killing farmers isn’t honorable, but he just nods. Agamemnon then establishes the formation for the raids: he and Menelaus will be in the center, Achilles on the left, Odysseus on the right, and Diomedes and Ajax on the wings. These are prestigious positions. Some men are angry that Agamemnon has claimed the center spot for himself, but Odysseus says it was wise, as it allows Agamemnon to receive messages from all sides. Achilles says to Patroclus that he’s pleased with his prime placement. Patroclus asks if Achilles thought of the men he killed on the shore as animals, but Achilles didn’t; he didn’t even think. He’s not afraid: this is what he was born for.
Patroclus promised earlier to forgive Achilles for his kills, but he seems to be having a difficult time already; he wants Achilles to fight honorably, but as these battle plans indicate there doesn’t seem to be any such thing. Meanwhile, Achilles seems to have accepted his destiny as a killer, and in accepting that destiny he’s found an answer to his earlier dilemma about killing: he can just stop thinking, stop being himself. In accepting his destiny, he gives up himself. Meanwhile, as always with Odysseus, it’s not totally clear what game he s is playing by helping Agamemnon save face, but he’s probably not blindly loyal and instead is expecting to get something out of it.
Themes
The next morning, Achilles and Patroclus eat silently. Patroclus won’t go with him on the raid; it’s a king’s raid, meant to grant honor, and it will be Achilles’s “first real kill.” Patroclus has little to say; theirs is a world of war, and you either kill and win or kill and die. Even Chiron, Patroclus reflects, gave Achilles a spear. As Achilles greets his men, he seems so heroic that Patroclus almost forgets that Achilles was once a child. Patroclus helps Achilles put on his armor, but he wishes he could help him escape from it instead. When he puts on Achilles’s helmet, he can’t see Achilles’s face.
As Patroclus is forced to reckon with the reality of Achilles imminently killing people—perhaps innocent people—in close combat, he expresses frustration with the structure of their society, which considers killing honorable. At the same time, he believes that there is no escaping that structure, as he considers the fact that even Chiron ended up giving a gift of war. That he can no longer see Achilles face when Achilles is in his armor reflects the way that the warrior version of Achilles isn’t the one that Patroclus knows and loves.
Themes
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Patroclus returns to sleep during the raid. When Achilles wakes Patroclus up afterwards, Patroclus is revolted; Achilles is covered in blood. Patroclus worries that Achilles has been hurt, but it’s not Achilles’s blood—no one could get close enough. It was easy, he says. He killed twelve men, all of whom had nothing to do with Helen or Paris. Achilles assures Patroclus that they were armed and that he wouldn’t kill someone who was unarmed.
This is the first time Patroclus has really had to face who Achilles is in battle. Achilles isn’t someone who can be hurt by others; his gifts seem to make battle against him almost unfair. Note how Achilles attempts to maintain his personal sense of honor here by drawing distinctions: the men he killed had nothing to do with the reasons for waging the war, but were armed, so it’s ok. It’s worth watching whether Achilles promise that he won’t kill an unarmed person will hold up.
Themes
Sharply, Patroclus asks how many people Achilles will kill tomorrow, but he immediately feels ashamed. He promised to forgive Achilles—he knows his destiny—so he apologizes and asks Achilles to continue describing the raid. Achilles tells Patroclus how his spear pierced someone’s cheek. Patroclus imagines that these words are a story rather than relating facts. Each day the raids continue, and Achilles tells Patroclus every detail. Patroclus listens, hoping that if he digests the images, he can free Achilles and make him himself again.
Patroclus is using the same coping mechanism he used when he took the oath and had sex with Deidameia: he pretends the things Achilles tells him are fiction. In doing this, he’s distinguishing between the Achilles who kills and the Achilles he loves, pretending that the killer is a character in a story and the Achilles he knows is the real one. That’s both true and untrue. Achilles is literally a character in this novel, but murder is still a part of how Madeline Miller presents him. This implies that Patroclus shouldn’t bother to distinguish between the two different versions of Achilles and should instead accept Achilles as he is. After all, Achilles’s complications are how he’ll be remembered later—literally, because readers see the full picture of who Achilles is in this novel.
Themes
