| The end and mortality of man |
| The fire , growth and beauty of man |
Joshua Varela
Mortality of Man and the fire in all mortals
In book 21 of the Iliad Achilles is enraged and goes on a rampage to kill as many trojans as he can. As half of the Trojan are able to return to the city the remain men are driven into the river. This river is known to all as river blessed by zeus and the river it self is a god. Achilles has made the rivers mad for causing the rivers to be filled with blood and to make sure the river gods don't kill Achilles the Gods intervene and set the man and corpses and field on fire. They do this to prevent the untimely death of Achilles . This give you insight to how the Gods view man and what does man have to say for themselves .
Mortal men, pitiful wretches—like leaves, at one moment
they are full of the blazing fire of life, eating the fruit of the field,
but suddenly they shrivel away to death.
Book 21 line 464-466
This simile depicting a connection between man and the seasons and how we are once full of life like planets in full season and we are filled with so much life which is an internal fire within us . The Tenor for this simile is Hephaistos . Who at this point is actually setting the banks of the river a blaze to prevent the death of Achilles by the two rivers. Men is seen as a changing season , because the gods are immortal they view man as temporary almost similar as food. Yet they still realize that man is mortal and because of that we are pitiful are lives can be beauty and have great moments but at the end we are just ants or little grains in the grand view of things . Compared to a god who can live forever and see many man past by are value is lessen because of that . "eating the fruit of the field" we are the crop and the Gods wants us to beware of that. We may not be the best crop but there is hope for the next crop to be better toward humanity . This simile provokes a lot of imagery and mortal of man . I also like to talk about the fire because the fire has always been see as life but is also connected to death because when Greeks are sent to the after life they are burned . So it is a ever going cycle of life and death . The cycle is they connected to the fires of ideas and greatness but also the funeral pyres .
1 comment:
This is a terrifying simile from one of the most intense and freakish episodes in the Iliad. You are right, the fire imagery is rampant here, and has been building up in intensity over the past few books. Patroclus and Hector get some fire imagery, but it is Achilles who burns with the greatest intensity. The simile you chose fits in with the speech of Glaucus to Diomedes in Book 6, comparing men to the generations of leaves, and the many similes comparing dying warriors to plants and trees cut down in their prime.
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