The Song of Achilles: Book Review and Analysis
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Content Warning
Introduction
First and foremost, I am not the type of person who feels compelled to give highly popular book glowing reviews just because everyone else does. I have no problem giving my honest opinion on them. I'm giving this novel a good review, not because of the hype, but because I genuinely feel it deserves it.
The Song of Achilles is a Greek mythology retelling by Madeline Miller that covers the events of Homer's The Iliad, but instead of being told from Achilles' perspective, it is told by his companion Patroclus. There has been quite a deal of speculation about the nature of Achilles and Patroclus' relationship as written by Homer--were they really cousins? Were they actually lovers? Or were they simply just really close friends? As far as the actual Iliad goes, I don't suppose we'll ever know, but in The Song of Achilles, Miller has no shame in retelling their relationship explicitly as a tragic love story. Taking a character like Achilles, who is historically such a traditionally masculine heroic figure, and putting him in an explicit, unapologetic same-sex male relationship is such a wonderful move on Miller's part. Partially because it's progressive, but also because it is Achilles and Patroclus' relationship that makes this story worth reading.
Summary & Review
I'll admit it: I'm very hard to please with romance stories. If I can't emotionally feel the chemistry and the love between the characters while I'm reading, then I'm not going to be invested in the relationship or impressed by it. Miller, however, captivates me with the love story between Achilles and Patroclus remarkably well in the novel. The entire time I was reading, I was so invested in these two being together (until the end, at least) because I was so in-tune with Patroclus' feelings. I felt his yearning, his love, and his eventual heartbreak as their relationship began to fall apart. It's such a testament to how good a writer Miller is when she can make me feel everything that her protagonist is feeling.
I believe I discussed this in my review of Miller's second novel Circe as well, but part of why it's so easy to invest in her characters' feelings is because of her writing style. I just adore it. She has this way of writing beautifully and eloquently, but at the same time, it's simplistic and straightforward. It's the perfect balance of not being too over-the-top prosy, but also not being too basic and boring either. It really seems like she's mastered her voice when writing narration. I also want to compliment Miller's skill in keeping this story so well contained. There was never any point in reading where I felt like the story wasn't about Patroclus and Achilles anymore; even after both of them were dead, it still felt like it was about them. It would have been so easy for Miller to get lost in the other side characters, or the story of the Trojan War, or to really expand the ending and make this novel even longer, and really retell the full scope of The Iliad. But that's not the point here. If someone wants to read The Iliad, they can read The Iliad. The point of this story was to give Patroclus a voice, flesh him out as a full character, and explore his deeply-bonded relationship with Achilles, and that's exactly what Miller does. She walks the border of going beyond this when it's necessary to understand the plot, but she always comes back to that core of the story.
Another thing that Miller does, which I really appreciate, is that she doesn't try to romanticize the person that Achilles becomes by the end of the novel. There's a lot of glorifying Achilles that goes on in the first three-quarters of the book, and that's mostly because we're getting everything from Patroclus' point of view, and he's in love with Achilles. By the end of the novel though, at the height of the Trojan War, Achilles becomes a pretty unlikable character. I mean, he was willing to let Briseis be taken captive by Agamemnon and potentially raped by him just because that would let Achilles legally kill Agamemnon and end their feud. It's pretty despicable, so much so that even Patroclus knows it's wrong. I can see how some readers might be tricked into continuing to root for Achilles here, because however bad he may have gotten, Agamemnon is definitely worse. He allowed his adolescent daughter to be slaughtered in a sacrifice. He auctions off women prisoners-of-war to his soldiers to be used as sex slaves. He's disgusting, and so the reader naturally wants him to be taken down, but the problem is that Achilles becomes arguably just as bad in order to do it.
So, as a person, that makes him pretty awful. But as a character and as a function in the story, it makes him very complex, and that's good.
It does raise an interesting question though: was Achilles always this bad? We start the story when he and Patroclus are children and cover years of their life into adulthood, and Achilles is never the viewpoint character telling the story. It makes it difficult to discern when and where he became so terrible, or if he ever wasn't. As a reader, I see two distinct possibilities:
1. Achillies was always proud, bordering on a dangerous level of arrogance, and the reader was tricked into not realizing it because we are getting the story from Patroclus' rather rosy view of Achilles. Therefore, we don't see how bad Achilles truly is until Patroclus himself actually starts to see it--which takes Achilles allowing someone that Pat cares about a lot to be put in harm's way.
2. Achilles had his faults as most people do, but he was never actually a bad person until the Trojan War. Ten years' worth of fighting in battle nearly every day traumatized him. Ten years' worth of people idolizing him and expecting him to be a hero and a literal god inflated his ego. The result is that Achilles progressed naturally over time from the boy that Patroclus fell in love with to the vicious warlord we saw at the story's conclusion.
Miller never comes right out and tells us which it is, but there's evidence from the novel that supports both interpretations. My personal understanding is that it's probably a little bit of both. The reason it's so difficult to say for certain, though, goes back to Miller's choice to have Patroclus as the story's narrator.
Patroclus is an unreliable narrator. That comes straight from Madeline Miller herself. She claims that she wrote him as an unreliable narrator purposefully. That doesn't mean that the reader should be questioning the validity of any of the story's events. Everything that happened, happened. It's Pat's personal thoughts and feelings attached to the events that might be unreliable. We can't necessarily take every feeling he has personally when analyzing the truth of the story because they're biased, just as every person's thoughts and feelings are. And that, in turn, makes Achilles more complicated. The entire beginning of the novel, we're told how great Achilles is. Supposedly he's strong, and handsome, everyone adores him, and he's just about a perfect human being. The important thing to keep in mind about this is that this isn't Miller herself, as the author, telling us these things. Patroclus is telling us these things. Miller is writing exclusively from his viewpoint and within the range of all the emotions that come with it for as long as Pat is alive. And Patroclus is in love with Achilles. That's biased, and therefore, unreliable when making assumptions about Achilles' character and personality. Therefore, when reading, we don't have to agree that Achilles is so wonderful and perfect; we just have to accept that that's how Patroclus feels about him.
This unreliable narration extends to Patroclus' characterization as well, as one cannot expect an unreliable narrator to reflect accurately on himself. I've seen a lot more people who read the novel and didn't like Patroclus than who didn't like Achilles. It's surprising to me, as I found that Pat was far more morally well-minded and had more redeeming qualities. I like him, and I think the reason that a lot of readers tend to criticize him more is because they are being manipulated by the unreliability of his narration. They're being tricked into viewing Achilles and Patroclus both the way that Patroclus sees them, instead of looking at each character objectively.
The most common criticisms I see of Patroclus' character are: he's whiny, he's too clingy and dependent on Achillies, and he's a cowardly tagalong narrator. Ironically enough, these are almost completely identical to the rather pessimistic views that Patroclus sees in himself. I don't necessarily think that makes them true though.
First off, I don't really think he's whiny. He does tend to be pessimistic and pretty down on himself sometimes, but Patroclus has been through a lot, so I'm willing to allow him a bit of depression every once in a while without calling it "whiny." And it's not as if we don't see moments of him being truly happy or optimistic. We do. I would say he is realistically emotionally well-rounded given the situations that he was put in.
He's also not a coward. He might see himself that way just because he isn't as physically strong or skilled at fighting as Achilles or the other boys his age. But physical strength and courage are not synonymous. People can be courageous and brave in ways that don't involve being in a physical fight, and we see Patroclus exhibit many other forms of bravery all throughout The Song of Achilles. When Achilles leaves to go live temporarily at Mount Pelion, Pat realizes that he won't be happy being left behind and takes it upon himself to follow Achilles there. He doesn't know if he'll be accepted at Mount Pelion, or if he'll be able to return to Peleus' kingdom if he is turned away from Mount Pelion. He's risking losing everything and doing it because he knows that is what's best for him if it works out the way he wants it to. He also goes after Achilles all on his own when he learns that Achilles' mother Thetis took him against his will to the island of Scyros. He goes off to the Trojan War when he knows he can't fight well, and he even eventually led an army in Achilles' place and climbed the wall of Troy multiple times. All of these things take a certain amount of courage, and I can't imagine someone who is actually a coward doing them.
These examples also negate the idea that Patroclus is a tagalong narrator. Yes, in most instances, he's going somewhere to be with Achilles. But he is also making these choices of his own volition and, therefore, influencing the plot. The entire ending couldn't have happened the way it did if Patroclus had not volunteered to fight in Achilles' place when Achilles refused, making him integral to the story's conclusion.
Patroclus also has aspects of a life outside of just being Achilles' lover. Specifically, he develops into a very skilled healer to help during the war, as he cannot fight in combat well. It's something that he learned all on his own, completely independent of his relationship with Achilles. Pat may do a bit of worrying about how his life will go on if/when Achilles dies like his prophecized to, which might be why people see him as too codependent, but I think it's a natural thing to worry about, given not just their relationship, but also Patroclus' status as an exile.
There's also the matter of the time that Patroclus went directly against Achilles' wishes--one might even say betrayed him--to do what he knew was right. When Pat figures out that Achilles' plan is to let Agamemnon take advantage of Briseis and use that as the instigation that will allow Achilles to kill Agamemnon, Pt doesn't let his love for Achilles stop him from doing what's right. He marches right into Agamemnon's camp, betrays his beloved's trust by revealing what Achilles is planning, wounds himself to vouch for his honesty, and manages to keep Briseis from being raped because now Agamemnon knows he can't do it unless he wants to be killed. There's bravery in doing this--physical, by risking walking into a hostile camp, and emotional, by standing up for someone else's rights against the one he loves most. On top of that, it also contradicts the idea that Patroclus is completely dependent on Achilles. He may think that there's no life for him without Achilles, but his actions contradict those fears because this moment could have been the end of their relationship, and Pat still did it to stand up for his own beliefs, proving that he is his own person.
With this in mind, I do think it's time to discuss the deeper motivations that Patroclus might have had for stopping the scheme with Briseis and Agamemnon. As horrible and disgusting as it is to say, it doesn't seem like any of the other male characters in this novel care much about treating women well or about how horrific and traumatic rape is. This instance of Patroclus fighting to protect Briseis, as well as her introduction (when Pat asks Achilles to claim her, so that Agamemnon cannot and won't hurt her), are the only moments where we seem to see a male character express an anti-rape stance. It could be easy to assume that Patroclus is just an all-around more sensitive, empathetic character, which is true, given his depiction as a healer, not a warrior. But I don't think it properly explains his motives in protecting Briseis, as it negates his earlier characterization.
We're given the context of Achilles' parents early in the story from Patroclus' perspective. King Peleus raped Thetis. Despite knowing that, Patroclus never expresses any sort of empathy towards Thetis for what she went through, nor does he regard Peleus with the same degree of villainy that he does with Agamemnon, despite that their actions against women were largely the same. It could be explained away by the fact that Thetis was always quite cruel to Patroclus, so he had a harder time sympathizing with her. However, I think it feels more like something happened in Patroclus' life to make him realize the true nature of how traumatic sexual violence is for a victim. I think this because, frankly, something did happen.
It's perhaps the most puzzling chapter in The Song of Achilles. Many people don't understand what its purpose in the story is. It's uncomfortable to read, and it's most fans' least favorite chapter. However, I think the discomfort that people feel for this chapter is for the wrong reason. The chapter, as it reads, features Patroclus being brought into the chambers of Deidameia--Achilles' pregnant wife, who he was manipulated by his mother into wedding and consummating his marriage with. Deidameia spends some time insulting Patroclus, then weeping, and she even slaps him across the face, and then a very strange and disconcerting sexual encounter ensues. Many fans criticize this chapter for depicting Patroclus cheating on Achilles with his own wife and never having it impact the story. Honestly, though, I would argue that this isn't really consensual. Here's a list of the things that happen:
1. Patroclus is taken by guards with weapons in hand to Deidameia's chambers and encouraged to go quietly. Deidameia herself knew that Achilles was away when she planned it, as Pat was vulnerable.
2. Deidameia clearly blames Pat for being the reason that Achilles will not regard her (giving her a plausible motive for seeking to hurt Pat and hurt Achilles by extension). She insults him, hits him, and then weeps and guilt-trips him over the circumstances, which aren't Pat's fault because he didn't know about the marriage arrangement in the first place. It works though, and Pat takes the guilt as his own.
3. Patroclus is clearly uncomfortable and even refers to the moment as being a panic. He tries to remind Deidameia that Achilles will be looking for him and even tries to physically pull away from her, but she is the one who will not let go of him.
4. When he tries to leave, Deidameia threatens him by saying that she will tell the guards that he attacked her if he tries to go without her permission.
5. Patroclus verbally tells Deidameia that she doesn't want to do what he knows she is about to do, but she insists that she does.
6. He only "consents" to sex with her after it is clear that she won't let him leave, she's guilt-tripped him into thinking he is the one who has hurt her in some way, and he has been convinced that she wants something from him specifically that can make her feel better. He has sex with her thinking that that is it, and he only realizes after it's over that he didn't actually bring her any comfort.
7. Patroclus relegates the memory of this encounter as being like a dream, something that didn't actually happen. This is something that he has done with other traumatic memories in his life, from as far back as childhood.
Does this feel like real consent? Even if you don't want to label it as a rape scene, it certainly feels more like emotional coercion and capitulation to me, and we in a modern, enlightened society know that coercion and capitulation are not the same thing as consent. Try imagining the gender roles reversed here, if you need to. If a man did this to a woman, instead of the other way around, would it still seem consensual?
I also think that Patroclus never telling Achilles about this experience is indicative that it was traumatic for him. They have a "we tell each other everything" policy that extended to Achilles telling Pat when he slept with Deidameia, but for some reason, Pat can't or doesn't go to Achilles with his own encounter with her. Perhaps he was worried that Achilles would seek retribution, which would be bad given that Deidameia was pregnant with Achilles' child at the time? Or maybe the experience was just too hard for him to discuss. Miller leaves it pretty vague and open to interpretation.
On top of not feeling like it was actually consensual, I also disagree with some people's interpretation that this chapter had no function in the story. Generally speaking, most authors know to cut extraneous material that doesn't impact the story out of the final versions of their novels. Most authors don't leave in material that doesn't advance either the plot or the characters' developments. The fact that Miller left it in the book means that she clearly thought it was important to some aspect of the story. It's true that this chapter doesn't advance the plot--actually, it's never mentioned again after it happens--but that only means that the reason Miller included it was because she felt that it was necessary for character development, and I have to agree. I think this traumatic moment in Patroclus' life was the catalyst for why he was so against Briseis or any other women being used for sexual exploitation later. In a different kind of circumstance, he's been through it. And even though Miller doesn't out-and-out spoon feed it to us, we can assume that this is the baseline emotional experience behind Patroclus's decision to protect Briseis.
If you want to take the fact that it took Patroclus being sexually exploited himself to realize the insidious nature of sexual violence, but not beforehand, as a potential criticism of his character, I accept that as completely valid. But as far as calling him a whiny, cowardly, codependent tagalong, I don't accept that.
If anything, I would argue that Achilles is the real whiny, cowardly, dependent one in this relationship. I know what you're thinking: but Achilles is Aristos Achaion, and he's always so brave and strong! Wrong. Patroclus sees him this way, but since he's unreliable, this isn't always true. Achilles is the one who sat around and moped about wanting his honor back after Agamemnon wounded his pride (as if he expected a man who literally helped murder his own daughter to apologize for hurting his feelings). Achilles was the one who was willing to let others be raped or killed in battle when he thought that's what it took to reclaim his honor. It's beyond whiny, and he also flat-out refused to continue fighting the war until he regained his honor. Even when Patroclus--the man who Achilles claimed to love, who he knew couldn't fight--decided that he would fight in Achilles' stead. Achilles just sat back like a coward and refused to do it himself. And when this ended up getting Patroclus killed, what did he do? He literally slept next to his corpse every night, went on a massive killing spree, and then embraced his own imminent death because he couldn't bear to be separated from Patroclus. Yes, there are some touching moments, such as Achilles bestowing Pat posthumously with the title "Aristos Achaion" (the best of the Greeks), the title that he himself had been striving for his entire life, but suffice to say, I think it all makes it clear that Achilles was far more codependent than Patroclus ever was.
So if Achilles was the whiny, codependent coward, then why are so many readers' perceptions of the characters flipped? Because your interpretation isn't being influenced by the facts of the story! It's being manipulated by Patroclus' biased feelings as the protagonist! And Miller pulled this off so well that I don't think every person who reads the novel realizes this once they reach the end. I still love that Miller chose to write the story this way though. Not only because it is masterfully done or because it allows the reader to fully immerse themselves in the protagonist's feelings, but also because it allows Miller to pull off this absolutely amazing narrative twist for the ending.
Usually, the ending is the biggest criticism I see of the novel. People feel that the last hundred-so pages of the book weren't as good as the beginning and middle portions. I am here to tell you that that is absolutely not true! Yes, the last quarter of the novel has a different tone and overall pacing, but it's actually really good when you dig into why Miller chose to write it this way. After all, Miller didn't just forget the original tone and pacing of the book; she changed it for a specific reason. Because you know what else differs in the last quarter of the novel?
The main character is dead.
Many readers tend to feel that the end of the novel lacked the overall charm and emotional pull that the beginning and middle had. They feel that the plot points of the ending were being rushed through, happening too quickly, without giving the reader the chance to feel the weight of it all. That is all true, but I don't see it as a weakness. I think Miller did this purposely because she wanted the readers to truly feel the loss of Patroclus from the story when he died. He was our narrator, our protagonist, the lens with which we were viewing the story. All of the charm in the beginning came from us experiencing his emotional right alongside him. But once he's dead, the narration shifts from being specifically from his point of view, to being more omniscient and detached, and everything changes as a result of that. The charm and raw emotion of the tone are gone because there's no protagonist to feel it. The slow pacing that allows every individual moment to breathe is gone because there's no protagonist to live in those moments. Miller is literally forcing her reader to grieve for Patroclus by showing you what happens to the story when he's removed. If you missed the way the first three-quarters of the novel felt, then Miller did her job perfectly. You're mourning for Patroclus right alongside Achilles.
Writing the ending this way also gives you the chance to see things in a different light. It's no coincidence that Achilles is perhaps at his most unlikeable once Patroclus is dead. And on top of that, Pat is the one that everyone seemed to be honoring once he died--with King Menelaus himself carrying back his body and the army rallying over him when he died in battle, a treatment that Achilles never got when he finally fell. It's such a narrative shift from what we saw at the beginning, where it seemed like Achilles was the noble hero everyone loved, and Pat was the unsung hero falling by the wayside. This ending gives us the necessary glimpse to know that that isn't true. That was all just Patroclus' bias getting in the way, and this more omniscient, emotionless viewpoint showed us the way it actually was.
Would it have been nice if the ending let certain impactful moments breathe? Like Briseis' death, or Achilles'? Or to spend more time building up the monster that Neoptolemus was? Or showing the war play out? Certainly. But Miller would have had to break her amazing narrative shift to do it, and that would have cheapened not just the impact of Patroclus' death, but also the overarching impact of his point of view on the entire novel.
There is some blend of open-endedness as well as concrete resolution in the novel that I enjoy. We never get a clear explanation from Achilles as to why he took an interest in Patroclus when they were children in the first place. We might be able to assume that it was because Pat was so shy that he was the only boy not flocking to idolize Achilles, but Miller never tells us for certain and leaves each reader to fill in that gap in their mind. I was also always left wondering if the reason that the god Apollo threw Patroclus from the wall of Troy--causing the events of his death--was really simply because the gods were defending Troy and preventing its siege. Or was the true reason because Achilles was trying to escape his predetermined fate to die in the war after King Hector, so by pushing Patroclus to his death by Hector's hand, it pushes Achilles to murder Hector in vengeance and run towards his fate. Was Patroclus' death Achilles' punishment for defying fate? There's an implication of this in the novel, with the two learning at a young age about the story of Heracles: the gods punished him by forcing him to murder his own wife and children, but the punishment was for Heracles, not his murdered family. Achilles was initially confused as to how this could be, as he's certain that it was far worse for the family who died. He is forced to learn the lesson himself, though, after Patroclus is gone, and it's Achilles' own fault, and he learns that being the one left behind truly is more painful. Miller never comes right out and says that all this is why Apollo pushed Patroclus, but there's enough context to infer that it.
We do get to see Achilles and Patroclus finally reunite (albeit in a very brief and vague moment) in the underworld in death. Ordinarily, I wouldn't be a fan of this type of ending, but I think for this novel it worked. Especially with Miller's choice to have Achilles' mother Thetis be the one to carve Patroclus' name on the tomb next to Achilles', so that he could finally be at rest, and the two could be together again. Throughout the novel, Thetis always hated Patroclus. As cruel as it sounds, it's understandable. She's an immortal goddess who wants her son to be an immortal god someday. Patroclus is a mortal human and potentially stands in the way of Achilles striving for an immortal life, so she wants Patroclus out of the way. It makes sense, and I love that in those final moments, once Thetis has reconciled that Achilles has died a mortal, she's at least willing to make her peace with his love and allow them to reunite.
The final conversation between Patroclus and Thetis also gives Miller another opportunity to add even more depth to a novel that already had so much to analyze. To convince Thetis to allow him to put his spirit to rest within Achilles' tomb, Patroclus allows Thetis to see all of his memories of Achilles. Presumably, she saw their entire love story from sweet beginning to heartwrenching ending. However, as this final chapter is playing out, we don't actually get to see the moments as Thetis is experiencing them. What we did have, though, was the entire first three-quarters of the book, where we're reading everything that we can assume Thetis is seeing in the last chapter. It's led some fans to believe that the entire beginning of the novel is Patroclus sharing his memories with Thetis. That's why everything is so overly romanticized, that's why it's biased, that why it's from Patroclus' point of view and not Achilles', that's why it all goes away once Pat is dead and there are no more memories to share--because everything up and until Patroclus died was just Patroclus trying to convince Thetis how much he loved her son.
Not only do I love this because it adds one more layer of depth, but also because it saves Miller from potential minor criticisms. Why are some of the side characters not developed more? Because Pat's only focusing on his story with Achilles. Why does it seem like Achilles is too perfect and never has to struggle for anything? Because Patroclus is playing him up for his mother's sake after he's gone. It's such a brilliant writing move, and I feel that Miller pulled it off remarkably well.
Final Thoughts
Needless to say, I rated this book 5 out of 5 stars. I loved the story, the writing, the characters. I felt every raw emotion. There was so much to analyze, and I devoured this whole book in three days flat--for some of you readers out there, that's average, but it usually takes me about two to three weeks to finish a book. The Song of Achilles just hooked me in a way that a lot of books don't, and it refused to let me go until I reached the end.
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