The song of achilles gay
My Writing on Medium
A retelling of the love story of Achilles and Patroclus. The Song of Achilles follows the story from Patroclus’ point of view, from boyhood, charting his friendship and eventual relationship with Achilles, all the way until their tragic end in the Trojan War. (And I’m not going to apologise for spoilers. That would be silly.) Not a recent publication, but I loved it a lot, so I’m going to stick a review here.
It’s taken me a little while to process this one. Not because I had problems with it, but because the emotions are so huge, they took a minuscule longer to digest than normal sized non-mythic emotions. It is a pleasure as a story, and also caused me to show on the employ of epic emotions in storytelling, and the role tragic stories play in modern literature. As a love story, it is lovely and well studied, and those titanic emotions are heartbreaking at times. I love the larger than life quality of it—Miller really captures the mythic nature of the originals, while making it all much more personal and focused. The writing style is straightforward but lyrical.
There are some changes to the familiar stories, the main one being Patroclus is not a fighter. He chooses t
Goodreads
Summary: The Song of Achilles is a book written by Madeline Miller and is the story of Achilles and Patroclus’ relationship. The book is written in first person from Patroclus’ indicate of view. In the book we are told more about the background of Patroclus, how Patroclus and Achilles met, their education by Chiron, and the Trojan war. It is similar in setting to the Iliad and the Odyssey. The gods and guy conspire and battle together and in the end there is always tragedy.
My take: The manual is beautifully written. Ms. Miller is an exceptional journalist. Her way of describing what is happening makes the scenes in my head so much more detailed. Her description of the gods was also very well done. I could view Thetis, Apollo and Chiron so clearly I had to stop several times to soak in the visions. The story was also very entertaining and all the characters involved in the book were very well described and developed. The obstacle I mostly had with this guide was the story line, especially towards the end.
The starting of the manual tells us about Patroclus and his hardships, and when he is exiled he finally meets Achilles and they develop a tough friendship.
Q.: Do the Greek myths really matter in our modern world of cutting-edge technology and tenuous global politics?
A.: It can be a cliché to phone a story timeless. But the stories of ancient Greece—the Iliad foremost among them—are exactly what this cliché was made for. To borrow Ben Jonson, they are not “of an age, but for all time.” Human innateness and its attendant folly, passion, pride and kindness has not changed in the past three thousand years, and is always relevant. And especially at this fractured and shifting historical moment, I assume people are looking advocate to the past for insight. These stories own endured this long, moving generation after generation of readers—they must, still, own something important to announce us about ourselves. Every day on the front page of the newspaper is an Iliad of woes—from the self-serving Agamemnons to the manipulative, double-speaking Odysseuses, from the senseless loss of life in war to the unfeeling treatment of the conquered. It is all there, in Homer too: our past, present and future, inspiration and condemnation both.
I would also include, more specifically, that I think the culture is ready for the compassionate of love story that t
The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
Rating: No Good Genre: Fantasy Representation: Gay men, Greek/Mediterranean cast Trigger Warnings: rape, rape culture, explicit sex scenes, child sexualization, exotified ethnicity, character death
I stopped reading The Song of Achilles a third of the way through. I started the novel with high hopes, as The Ballad of Achilles promised to be an exploration of the idealistic relationship between Achilles and Patroclus—taking what The Iliad only implied and putting it to paper.
Here's what I was hoping for: an honest exploration of the ancient Greek conception of sexuality, taking into account that homoeroticism that we today would dial “homosexual” was not considered part of one's sexual identity, simply what one did (in addition to taking a wife, of course). What would a male child growing up in (mythical) ancient Greece, a land where even Zeus took male lovers, reflect about his own romantic and sexual desires? Does he craving only men (in The Tune of Achilles this is true of both Achilles and Patroclus), and what does that mean for him personally, as compared to what it would mean for us today?
Here's what I