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Honor In Death~ Logan Turner

Patroclus' death is the catalyst of events that happen later in the Iliad (as I'm sure we're all aware), but his death kinda stuck with me. I really liked the imagery of the lion and the boar in lines 958-59 "Down he crashed - horror gripped the Achaean armies./ As when some lion overpowers a tireless wild boar." It makes it seem like his death was savage. In a way, it was. I mean, the spear was sticking out of his back. That seems much more brutal than necessary, but that's war I suppose. The boar and lion analogy also continues later on in lines 962-63 "but the lion beats him down/ with sheer brute force as the boar fights for breath." It goes to further show Hector's brutality. The 'boar fighting for breath' also serves to give Patroclus some dignity in his death. Like, he knows he is about to die, but he fights on to keep breathing as if he had a chance to live. Fighting for breath, even while you're about to die, is honestly very impressive. It makes me respect Patroclus a little bit more.
Edit: Commented on Kaitlyn Terry's and Haylee Lynd's posts

Comments

  1. Jessef LeslieSeptember 1, 2020 at 12:09 AM

    1. Something i think is ironic but probably just an issue of Homer not having the same knowledge of the animal kingdom as we do is that Boars actually often times beat up lions and can throw them around with their large tusks, especially when in a group. As well as the fact that they he uses a lion to a few times to show brutal, hungry, powerful fighters yet while lions are great hunters most of the time their kills are stolen by hyenas and they actually very rarely get the prizes they earn (homer might have known this and made the connection to that of honor and glory as well) i don't know if he made that connection on purpose or if its just my over thinking

    2. In that time period fighting was all they had. So while gasping for air to fight another day seems crazy and can leave us awe-struck in that period it was the normal and it was expected of you. If you did not fight till your last breath you were simply a wimp and deserved to be executed anyways. So, it is important for us to remember that views on many things were different so some things we will find impressive, flawed, or even boring could've easily been the exact opposite so we can't really just read these texts from our perspective to see what it really is. I also should say I'm really just ranting and pouring a stream of thought here and not rationalizing anything I am typing.

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