The Grand Finale?

This is the way the world ends,

Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

The Hollow Men, Oscar Wilde

The Iliad has easily been one of the goriest, most action-packed novels I have ever read. Gruesome slow-motion death scenes, unstoppable heroes, and sad departures from this life abound in this poem. The war is such a huge deal in this poem that even the gods themselves pick sides and fight! Indeed, with such epic depictions of war and chaos, this novel seemed to set itself up for a tense, powerpacked final battle. Yes, I knew that this novel would not describe the end of the Trojan War (The Aenid serves that purpose) but a great, emotional, poem encapsulating climatic showdown at the end would have been nice.

Instead, Homer chose to forgo a climactic ending in favor of a anticlimax where Priam begs Achilleus for the body of Hector. Seriously? All this epic war and Homer ends it with a plea bargain? What kind of ending is that? A brilliant one, actually. See, what I failed to remember in the previous paragraph was that this poem was never about the war, Helen, or the fall of Troy. This is a poem about Achilleus and his all consuming rage. Yes, his wrath is the cause for everything that occurs in the poem and is arguably more furious than the Trojan War ever was. So many men die because of his bitterness towards Agammemnon and unwillingness to accept his destiny and fight against the Trojans. He desires to make Agammemnon pay for slighting him, resorting to cowardice. If he had done fought , the war might have ended so much sooner, but he chose to wait, and because of this the Achains nearly lose the war, which was Achilleus' plan all along. I don't know about you folks, but those are the characteristics of a villain, or at least an antagonist if you ask me.

So if every great story ends with a confrontation between a hero and the villain, is there such a situation in The Iliad? Remember Dr. Mitchell's definition of a hero, a man/woman who acts in the face of certain death. Is that not what Priam does when he goes to retrieve Hector's body. He must confront Achilleus face to face, the man that has killed almost all of his sons and would surely kill him, the most fearsome man in the Achain army, and all King Priam has is a plea. This IS the tense final showdown, disguised as an anticlimactic ending that serves that, while slightly betraying reader's expectations, does serve the story well. Priam does face Achilleus and succeeds by making Achilleus feel compassion, something he has yet to do throughout the story. It is at this point that Achilleus' rage wanes and he returns Hector to Priam. This diminishing of Achilleus' rage is the catalyst for the poem's ending, since that's what it's all about, you know. Of course, after this confrontation, the story enters it's "epilogue" and Hector is finally put to rest.

So there you go, The Iliad does have a climax, a final battle, and an epilogue, and that's all I have to say about that. Please feel free to comment, thanks!

BTW, I commented on Sara's post.