.........At some point in his or her life, every human that ever lived has had to come to terms with his or her own mortality. The certainty of our death defines who we are as humans: it gives us the impetus to accomplish great deeds while we are still alive, so that our existence will continue to last in the memories of others. Our mortality also gives us the ability to love and hate each other passionately, for we may risk our lives to help our friends and keep them alive, while we may try to destroy those we hate. In contrast, the gods, as portrayed in the Iliad, can never show any true love or hatred for one another, since they are all immortal and will continue to live regardless of anyone’s actions. Though many humans do not truly face their mortality until old age, the situation is different in war: every soldier wakes up each morning with the thought that he may be killed that day. With the possibility that the rest of their lives may consist of just a few short hours, the fighters must strive to win fame and glory in battle, since this is the only way to extend their existence beyond death. In the case of the Achaian army in the Iliad, where many years have passed since the beginning of the war and victory seems unlikely, the chance to win plunder seems remote, and for many, all that can keep up morale is the belief that the suffering and struggle serve some higher, worthwhile purpose.

.........But what happens when there is no meaningful "cause" to fight for, as many in the Trojan war come to realize? When a soldier believes that the war serves no real purpose, he loses his impetus to win great glory, because nothing but meaningless, empty glory can be gained in a meaningless struggle. Faced with the need to somehow make their lives worthwhile before they are killed, but robbed of the chance to win anything but empty glory, some may even come to believe that nothing in life matters at all. Of all the characters in the Iliad, Achilles falls hardest into this belief, and for a long while he can do nothing but lie on the beach, wallowing and weeping in self-pity. His emergence from this ineffective state of mind represents his transition from a shortsighted youth depressed at the human experience, to a man with a mature understanding of what it means to be human.

.........When stripped of the fancy rhetoric, the declarations to restore the honor lost when Helen was stolen, we see that the Trojan War, for all the pride and vaunting of the Achaians, is nothing but a mockery of honorable struggle; it is a bad, very deadly joke in the worst possible taste. The great armies of the Achaians have been battling in Troy as a result of their pledge to Menelaos that Helen would be brought back if she were taken. But after nine years of fighting, and so many deaths for the sake of one woman, this "great cause" seems rather foolish. First of all, Helen was not abducted against her will—she succumbed to the temptation of Paris’s beauty. We learn in the Odyssey (IV, 261) that she ran away with Paris on a whim, and only because she was tired of Troy did she decide not to betray Odysseus when he entered the city in disguise. The fight (Iliad, III, 346-382) between Menelaos and Paris is as absurd as an argument between Curly and Moe of the Three Stooges: since Paris seduced Menelaos’ slut of a wife, convincing her to run off with him to Troy, Menelaos and Paris, two of the weakest fighters in the story, meet on the battlefield and clown around in a slapstick melee—Menelaos tries to strangle Paris by comically twirling him around by the neck, until Aphrodite breaks the helmet strap and then whisks the would be victim away so that he and Helen, the two most shameless scoundrels in the story, can lie in the bed of love together. By this point, it is clear that any among the Achaians who still believes their mortal struggle to rescue Helen is worthwhile, is simply fooling himself, and denying that the war has been fought for the sake of a woman who respects her husband no more than a prostitute respects her customer.

.........Though at first he quit the battle as a result of his quarrel with Agamemnon, from his vantage point on the beach Achilles has a chance to observe the violence and absurdity of the war from a removed perspective. He doesn’t care about Helen, the great prize of Menelaos, because after all, his own prize, Briseis, was snatched from him by his own commander, who he knows at heart to be a foolish man, easily inferior to Achilles in both intelligence and fighting prowess. It is in fact exactly because Achilles far surpasses any Achaian or Trojan as a fighter, that he loses the desire to win glory. The other fighters can win praise for defying death and rallying their courage, and accomplishing feats in battle that surpass their normal strength. But Achilles’ victory in hand-to-hand combat is assured because of his vastly superior skills as a fighter, not because of any courage he musters in the face of death. Why fight when everyone already expects his victory, and when any prize he wins can be taken away by the idiot, Agamemnon? Certainly not for the sake of Helen; he would let her rot in Troy—she is Menelaos’ problem (Iliad, IX, 340). This is a fool’s war: the characters that helped start the conflict are all foolish and weak, contrasting sharply with Achilles. Paris is more concerned with the shine of his armor than with improving his feeble skills in battle, and Helen is an unfaithful slut. They are both controlled by Aphrodite, who is herself a foolish goddess, completely lacking the wisdom and strength of Athene. Menelaos, besides being weak like Paris, is a fool for wanting to win back the worthless Helen, and the whole Achaian campaign is lead by Agamemnon, whose decent battle prowess can never make up for the injuries caused by his incompetent decisions.

.........As Achilles passes many days observing the foolish battle from afar, he goes through a period of deep introspection. By the time Odysseus and his companions arrive and try to persuade him back into battle, Achilles has descended deep into an emotional rut which renders him completely unable to do anything but sob on the seashore. His state of mind is existential, in that he feels caught in a pointless world where nothing but suffering is certain, and because he exercises his own free will against the values of his society—his rejection of the gifts of Agamemnon is an action that his countrymen would consider to go completely against the rules: "The heroes would take gifts; they would listen, and be persuaded. (Iliad, IX, 526)" Achilles desires no such honor, for he knows that the same fate exists for the brave and the weak. "Fate is the same for the man who holds back, the same if he fights hard. We are all held in a single honour. . . . A man dies still if he has done nothing, as one who has done much. (Iliad, IX, 318-320)" His original realization that the war has no purpose has now become a belief that life itself has no meaning. He was born to suffer, and all his victories for the Achaians go unthanked. He even compares himself to a long-suffering mother bird, who "brings back morsels, wherever she can find them, but as for herself it is suffering. (Iliad, IX, 324)" Achilles’ original anger at Agamemnon has metamorphosed and become redirected into rage at simply being human in a world where suffering is the only constant.

.........Achilles might have continued to wallow on the beach, still weeping over the meaninglessness of life in general, until the Achaian fleet had been utterly destroyed, had he not been shocked into the realization that some things in his life are still important. In order for him to realize what still matters in his life, the person he loves most has to be taken away: it is only after the death of Patroklos that Achilles remembers his love for the man, which could not be erased even if the entire Achaian army were destined to perish in the stupid, pointless war. Only now, when Patroklos is dead forever, does Achilles realize that he had deluded himself into thinking life was meaningless. Though the war may be pointless, the strength of men irrelevant, and the glory of battle worthless, love and friendship are just as lasting as human suffering. Achilles’ weeping changes from the vain sobs of one who can find nothing of worth in life, to the genuine grieving of a man who has lost his lover, his most dear friend in the world.

.........It is significant to note the fact that Achilles weeps more than any other character by far. His mother Thetis is a goddess of the sea, and the gallons of tears Achilles sheds on the seashore may represent a kind of longing to return to his mother and his childhood. This reminds us just how young Achilles is—though he surpasses every other man in battle, he is still beardless (Plato’s Symposium, 180 a), really just a young teenager, perhaps sixteen years old. Besides all his other problems, he must also deal with the pain of growing up, and each phase of his changing emotions is a step in his painful maturing process. His emotional journey is somewhat like the experience of the prisoner being brought out of the cave in Plato’s Republic (514 a - 518 b): when Agamemnon takes away Briseis, Achilles learns that the values he was brought up with are worthless, and all the talk of honor and glory is just a mask to cover up the pointlessness of their futile struggle. This stage is like the thoughts of the prisoner as he is brought past the wall and learns that what he had always believed to be real were only shadows of the objects themselves. But it turns out that the objects being used as puppets are themselves only shoddy models of what is real and true, and after going through the painful process of being brought out into the light outside the cave, the prisoner finally learns that the objects he just mistook for being the true things the shadows represented, were themselves only shadows of the reality that lies outside the cave. Similarly, the death of Patroklos forces Achilles to realize that some of what he thought he came to know while lying on the beach turned out to be false, and the shattering pain of Patroklos’ death parallels the pain of the dazzling light in the prisoner’s eyes.

.........The permanence of Patroklos’ death is overwhelming. Just as human mortality gave Achilles the ability to love him and the desire to protect him, it also gives him the passion to destroy the things that caused his death. In rediscovering the power of love, even in a meaningless war, Achilles also rediscovers the power of hatred, and he focuses his hatred on Hektor. Since Patroklos has been destroyed and can never be brought back, all Achilles can do is cause more destruction, and the strength of his love for Patroklos is equaled by the strength of his desire to slaughter and maim Hektor. But Achilles’ choice to return to battle and kill Hektor may go deeper than simple destructive rage. Achilles knows full well that if he kills Hektor, he too will die soon after. It is possible that Achilles feels some repressed self-hatred after the death of Patroklos, for he sent his companion into battle, where he perished, while Achilles remained blinded by aloof despair and stayed behind, when he should have been protecting his companion. But more importantly, Achilles’ love for Patroklos is so strong and his grief so overwhelming that he will gladly join him in death, so that they can be together again (Symposium, 179 e). Thus Achilles continues to define his own value system separate from the tenets of society, as he did when he rejected the gifts of Agamemnon: he kills Hektor not for everlasting glory, but out of a desire for revenge and from a suicidal love for his friend.

.........Several days after killing Hektor, Achilles feels the grief over the death of Patroklos just as strong as before. He has continually attempted to maim Hektor’s body, but remains frustrated, due to the divine protection that was placed on Hektor’s body by the gods. Achilles does not feel the resolution he hoped to gain by avenging the death of his friend, and it is not until he meets with Priam that he comes to a kind of final understanding. The two gaze into each other’s eyes, and find that though they should be mortal enemies, they share a common ground. Achilles lost Patroklos, and Priam lost Hektor, and both losses are permanent. They each see their own suffering mirrored in the face of the other, and their common grieving over their permanent losses shows each that they share the same humanity, the same mortal suffering. Achilles realizes that no matter how much he defiles Hektor’s body, his grief will not be softened; the act of revenge does not help abate suffering. Achilles has come to know that his life will never offer more than the love and grief he feels, and he sees that Priam shares this understanding. They are both at the end of their lives, for Achilles’ death is fated and Priam’s city is doomed to fall. By giving away Hektor’s body, Achilles acknowledges Priam’s right to grieve the loss of his loved one before Troy is destroyed.

.........In its entirety, the Iliad is not just a description of the dynamic anger of Achilles, but is in fact a dramatic account of his psychological coming of age, the painful process by which he gains an understanding of the world and what it means to be human. He learns that the war in which he is destined to perish serves no purpose, and that the common deadly fate of the brave and the weak makes all his victories meaningless. But just as the prisoner from the cave of the Republic finally learns, once his eyes have adjusted to the light, that there are final truths that remain unbroken, Achilles comes to know that love and friendship cannot be destroyed, and that they make the constant suffering of human life bearable.