The Illiad

Sing O godess, the wrath of Achilles, for by the cruel hand of Jove his greatest comrade have perished.

And Achilles lamented, for he would wish to become the soil that flowers grow upon, and corpses are therein buried; had it been so, his friend might yet look his way.

Anger. Pure, unadulterated, undistilled anger. Rage. People getting unalived page after page with no stop. Swords at the bowels, gore and insults. Drama between Gods. Slavery.

To be fair I should have expected this of the oldest war epic, but there were no characters, no arcs I cared for. All the Gods were awful. The whole war seemed like it could end at some points, but then a character or a God got too salty for no reason. The whole war happens for no reason. It is not some trauma or whatever they are fighting for, but to get a woman. This contained so much toxicity I exercised 90 minutes, no problem, it is so full of bad energy.

Also I am very surprised how soon it ended? I thought it would go on for some more so I checked other 2 versions of the Iliad I had and no it ended without resolving the most intriguing parts.

This really made me think about how I handle my emotions and how it really affects me if I read something with a certain energy and how maybe not all classics are that worth reading and how I should really be looking for books that uplift me. Like I do not feel like I learned much from this, having those characters in my memory feels like baggage, but I suppose they have influenced our culture so much and you see them everywhere.

I hope the Odyssey and other Greek works are better and maybe focused less on war. I mean the work and days are about farming? Or so I heard, I hope.

I am trying to make a comment in my head about the characters, but really the real characters here were the armors and the swords. Like wow they really took all the care to forget them. Achilles is like...I hate him. He loves having slave women I guess and feels like they are his property... Wow, what a cool character? Ikr. He might be Bi, but like I don't care, we have a better book for that. Patroclus was just there I guess, I didn't really get good vibes from him and he was very okay with women slaves too.

The translation was a bit quirky using slurs and all that. I dunno, did Latin have them? Probably, I dunno. But it was very odd at times seeing those derogatory words.

What the author did well was the descriptions at the start, he would make these similes comparing troops to bees or something and really he was hacking everyone's brains with mnemonics way before they became a thing. He did it so everyone would remember this messy, gory story of pretty warrior angst.

I am kinda disappointed in Athene, I expected her to encompass wisdom, but what they meant by that is that she is a huge girlboss, gatekeeper, gaslighter.

It is funny how this whole war is so pointless with all the Gods just running around and ultimately randomly deciding who dies and not, but I guess humans can't see it. It's really disrespectful haha. They don't really seem much better than the Bible guy for worship and Zeus is pretty much the Bible guy— carbon copy. I know I am venting, but I read this whole thing so let's keep going.

When the novel goes into the petty drama, it is a bit more fun than the constant unaliving. It feels like they could almost do something with the characters, but then just let them be snakes to each other.

I have noticed a lot of “the sound and the fury” descriptions which I guess must be a popular phrase? Made me all the more curious about Faulkner.

Hector's family dynamic in particular seemed so traditional to me I chuckled for a while. Like they really be setting up their kid for a terrible life and they are so proud of themselves.

I love how many times instead of swords people actually just pick up humongous rocks that are just lying down everywhere and despite how heavy they are people succeed picking them up everytime.

I think my main problem is that you can take away some things in retrospect in our modern era, but it doesn't feel worth it and it definitely feels that we can write a better tale now. I suppose there must be technical poetic achievements here, but I am not the person to comment on that. I don't think a tale which recognizes the devastation of war should be so devoid in heart for the most of its duration because really it doesn't feel like the sorrow at the end is earned or resolved or anything. In this type of tale one should connect greatly to the characters as a raft, but again I did not connect to them at all so yea.

If anyone comes up to me and starts fanboying about the iliad (the song of achilles is fine) then I will run and try to save myself because I will have all sorts of unkind presumptions about them!! I am sorry in advance.

Am I not finishing this review yet because it's kinda like a toxic relationship? Yes. Bye.