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Chapter 5
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
After Patroclus witnesses Achilles’ training, Achilles and Patroclus grow even closer. Contrary to what the other boys assume, Achilles’s days are pretty open; he doesn’t train constantly. He mostly plays the lyre and does occasional drills. The two talk, play, and swim, and Patroclus realizes that he feels different now than he did when he arrived in Phthia, less tired and afraid. In his own kingdom, he was only ever briefly content when he was alone, but now he feels giddy. Patroclus teaches Achilles to skip stones and often watches him play the lyre. He no longer minds that he loses races or other games—it’s enough just to watch Achilles.
Achilles continues to display his uniqueness through his combination of conflicting traits; the ability to make beautiful music, and the ability to deal violence (also beautifully). Patroclus is happy now because he’s accepted Achilles’s contradictions, which makes the two of them closer than ever before. Still, it’s not clear whether Patroclus truly understands Achilles’s capacity for violence, because he keeps trying to slot Achilles into his mother’s position and subconsciously compare the two. The fact that he teaches Achilles to “skip stones” proves this, as does his continued fascination with Achilles’s lyre-playing. Both are activities Patroclus associates with his mother, who is actually innocent and incapable of hurting others, unlike Achilles.
Themes
Patroclus eventually tells Achilles how he murdered Clysonymus. Achilles wonders why Patroclus didn’t say he killed in self-defense—something that never even occurred to Patroclus—or why he didn’t lie and say he found the body. With this, Patroclus realizes that he lost his kingdom not because of the murder, but because of his stupidity; his father must have been so angry when he confessed. Achilles, however, comments that he also wouldn’t have lied, although he doesn’t know what he would’ve done. He adds that no one has ever attempted to take something of his—he assumes he’d be angry if they did.
Apparently, Patroclus’s inner honor code is a lot like Achilles’s: he didn’t even consider lying about murdering Clysonymus. And of course, his father’s honor code isn’t honorable at all—he uses honor to get what he wants, and lies as necessary to use the generally recognized honor code to get what he wants. That Patroclus initially sees his failure to manipulate the situation as a sign of stupidity suggests that the entire Greek honor code is corrupt—if it’s dumb not to exploit it, then everyone must exploit it. Achilles’s comment that no one has ever taken something of his again points to his “golden boy” life up to this point, and is a moment of foreshadowing for events later in the novel. That those events are also a part of well-known Greek myth increases the dramatic irony of the moment, as many readers will know what is coming, even as Achilles doesn’t.
Themes
Achilles often visits his mother, Thetis, by visiting the seashore. There, she speaks to him about his growing reputation and asks him to return underwater with her, something Peleus has forbidden since no mortal who does so remains unchanged. One day, Thetis asks to meet Patroclus alone. He arrives on the beach and she appears, inhumanly tall, abnormally pale. Patroclus instantly disgusts her; she says Achilles will be a god one day and asks if Patroclus understands what that means. Patroclus says he does, noting to himself that her mouth looks torn open, like her blood was sacrificed. She dismissively tells Patroclus he’ll be dead soon, then she turns and swims away.
Both Patroclus and Peleus want to ignore or deny Achilles’s less human side; and Peleus’s command that Achilles never go underwater seems an effort to deny Achilles the ability to engage with his divine half. Thetis, in contrast, cares little for Achilles human half, and wants to protect and bring forth his divine nature. Patroclus and Thetis seem to disgust each other—Patroclus sees Thetis as inhuman and therefore monstrous, while Thetis sees Patroclus as mortal and therefore meaningless and temporary. In a way, they are two sides of the “coin” that is Achilles—Patroclus tied to Achilles human half, Thetis to his divine half. Yet even as Patroclus is frightened of Thetis, his observations of her hint at her past trauma—her bloody mouth and “sacrificed” blood seem to hint at the sexual assault she endured from Peleus. Even though he views Thetis as powerful and frightening, he subconsciously acknowledges her former powerlessness.
Themes
Patroclus sits in an olive grove and thinks about what Thetis said. She doesn’t want him to be Achilles’s companion, but she also sees him as not even worth murdering. Her desire to make Achilles a god isn’t unprecedented; it’s happened to some of Zeus’s sons. But Thetis is a minor goddess—she can’t transform Achilles herself, so she’ll need to rely on favors from the other gods if she wants to make it happen. In fact, she can’t really do anything herself—only live eternally.
Patroclus’s insights here are penetrating. He recognizes that Thetis is, relatively speaking, not that powerful—that she can’t actually make happen the things she wants to make happen. Despite being a goddess she can, like most of the other woman in the novel, simply endure and try to affect the world through either indirect means or just by waiting. Seen this way, her dismissive attitude toward the mortal Patroclus seems like Thetis flaunting the one power that she has: immortality. Thetis’s desire to make Achilles a god also implies a desire to protect him: she loves him, and doesn’t want him to die.
Themes
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Achilles finds Patroclus sitting there. He assumes Thetis told Patroclus that he’d die soon, and he apologizes for it. Patroclus tells Achilles that his mother wants to make him a god; Achilles already knows, and he seems boyishly embarrassed by the notion. Patroclus asks if he wants to be a god. Achilles isn’t sure—he doesn’t even know what that would mean, or what the process would be like. He also knows that Thetis has no real plan; she’s banking on Achilles amassing a huge amount of fame, enough that the gods take him voluntarily.
Achilles seems to intuitively understand Thetis’s powerlessness, though, the same way Patroclus did—this makes sense, because all women in the novel are pretty powerless, even goddesses like Thetis. Meanwhile, Achilles himself makes clear that he hasn’t given much thought to any of this—he’s still a boy focused on his life, not thinking about his future beyond the simple fate he already knows about himself.
Themes
But Achilles hasn’t answered Patroclus. When prodded, he says he doesn’t want to be a god yet. Patroclus is relieved—he won’t have to lose him, at least not now. However, Achilles does want to be a hero if a war comes. Thetis believes he can be, assuming the prophecy is true. Achilles asks Patroclus if he’d want to be a god, which Patroclus finds funny—it’s not likely to happen. The two then run off in search of figs, their melancholy conversation forgotten.
Achilles feelings about becoming a god are unformed. Yet Achilles is already thinking about his human legacy, with his desire to become a hero. In contrast, Patroclus clearly doesn’t want Achilles to be a god, because the human Achilles is his friend whom he doesn’t want to lose. Patroclus himself, meanwhile, doesn’t have to worry about his own cosmic legacy in the way that Achilles does—becoming a god isn’t any part of his fate, whatever that might be. And, finally, the two boys are still boys—able to easily forget things like this and go find figs to eat. That won’t always be the case.
Themes
