Madeline Miller: The Song of Achilles
Sep. 26th, 2018 11:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bibliogrammaMadeline Miller’s Song of Achilles is a love story, between two young men growing up together, but of entirely different backgrounds and fates. It is simply told, and it is beautiful.
Achilles is a young hero, son of a king and a goddess, gifted with beauty, strength, speed, and all the talents a man could desire. He has never been ignored, never had his wishes set aside. Only his sweetness of character - another gift - keeps him from being a spoiled young brat.
Patroclus is also the son of a king, but his mother was called simple, and his father despised both her and the weak and untalented son she bore him. He is mocked by other boys, fails at arms training and other skills that every young Greek prince should know. When he accidentally kills another boy who is bullying him, he is exiled - to the court of Peleus, Achilles’ father.
Miller tells her tale through the voice of Patroclus, how Achilles came to choose him among all the young men fostered at Peleus’ court as his companion, of the anger of his mother, the great sea-nymph Thetis, at Achilles’s affection for a mere mortal, the years spent learning from the centaur Chiron, and the Trojan war. All the tales are here - the prophecies, the hiding of Achilles among the maidens and Odysseus’ strategem to lure him out, the stories of the Trojan war, from the bloody sacrifice of Iphigenia that brought the winds to the Achaean sails to the bitter end of the lovers’ story.
Miller treats the worldview of the ancient Greeks - their gods, their legends, their concept of honour - with respect, making the old stories real, giving humanity to the heroes and their conflicts with each other and their enemies beneath the walls of Troy. It’s a new telling of an ancient story, by a master storyteller.
Achilles is a young hero, son of a king and a goddess, gifted with beauty, strength, speed, and all the talents a man could desire. He has never been ignored, never had his wishes set aside. Only his sweetness of character - another gift - keeps him from being a spoiled young brat.
Patroclus is also the son of a king, but his mother was called simple, and his father despised both her and the weak and untalented son she bore him. He is mocked by other boys, fails at arms training and other skills that every young Greek prince should know. When he accidentally kills another boy who is bullying him, he is exiled - to the court of Peleus, Achilles’ father.
Miller tells her tale through the voice of Patroclus, how Achilles came to choose him among all the young men fostered at Peleus’ court as his companion, of the anger of his mother, the great sea-nymph Thetis, at Achilles’s affection for a mere mortal, the years spent learning from the centaur Chiron, and the Trojan war. All the tales are here - the prophecies, the hiding of Achilles among the maidens and Odysseus’ strategem to lure him out, the stories of the Trojan war, from the bloody sacrifice of Iphigenia that brought the winds to the Achaean sails to the bitter end of the lovers’ story.
Miller treats the worldview of the ancient Greeks - their gods, their legends, their concept of honour - with respect, making the old stories real, giving humanity to the heroes and their conflicts with each other and their enemies beneath the walls of Troy. It’s a new telling of an ancient story, by a master storyteller.