Let Me Be Remembered For My Love - Tumblr Posts

(Spoilers for the Song of Achilles)

Someone’s probably already said this but in The Song Of Achilles, Achilles dies because of an arrow to the heart. And that one moment hit me like a truck because I’d always been taught that Achilles dies because of the wound in his heel, his one weakness on an otherwise invulnerable body.

But it made so much more sense when you think backwards. Achilles’ destiny is tied to the war. If he chooses to fight, he’ll have glory and honor but a short life and painful death. If he chooses to stand aside, he watches his people die but lives a long, peaceful life. And everything about the Iliad suggests that Achilles is perfectly fine with a slow, quiet life with Patroclus. Until Patroclus takes it into his own hands and chooses to fight in Achilles’ place, and dies. Then, and only then, does Achilles seize his destiny. And in that his fate is sealed.

Achilles is killed by his greatest weakness: his heart. He may have had a heartbeat for quite a long time after Patroclus died, but Achilles’ heart was broken the moment they brought his body home.

So it makes sense that his greatest weakness, perhaps his only weakness, was his love. And that ties back to what I said in my other post about Orpheus and Eurydice. Like so many others, maybe Achilles doesn’t want to be remembered for his glory in battle.

Let me be remembered for my love. (My lover, my art, my home, my life)

Still brewing on whether or not Odysseus falls into this category. We shall see.