Iliad Book 22
Book 22 in The Iliad mainly revolves around Hektor and his upcoming fight with Achilleus. There was plenty of foreshadowing in Hektor's death. His mother insists that he flees, yet his pride prevents him from doing so. After a back-and-forth brawl between the two, Achilleus ends up defeating Hektor. What surprised me the most about this battle was the amount of disrespect Achilleus showed towards Hektor. On lines 261-263, Achilleus says "Hektor, argue me no agreements. I cannot forgive you. As there are no trustworthy oaths between men and lions, nor wolves and lambs have spirit that can be brought to agreement". After landing a fatal blow to Hektor, on lines 345-354, Achilleus makes multiple cruel statements about what will happen to Hektor after he is dead, including "I wish only that my spirit and fury would drive me to hack your meat away and eat it raw for the things that you have done to me". I can somewhat see why Achilleus is angry at Hektor, due to the death of Patroklos. However, the way that Achilleus goes about unleashing his wrath upon Hektor just seems unnecessarily severe to me.
In this book, we can definitely see the anger Achilles have towards Hektor after the death of Patroclus. After Achilles took Hektor down, he was dragging his body like it was nothing. I do agree with you that this may seem unnecessarily severe. However, Hektor did kill someone that is close to Achilles so I can see where his anger is coming from. Death can be a very sensitive subject.
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