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Achilles

Achilles possesses superhuman power and has a close relationship with the gods, he may strike modern readers as less than heroic. He has all the marks of a great warrior, but his deep-seated character flaws constantly obstruct his ability to act with nobility and honesty. He cannot control his pride or the rage that surges up when that pride is injured. This attribute so poisons him that he abandons his comrades and even prays that the Trojans will kill them, all because he has been slighted at the hands of his commander, Agamemnon. Achilles is driven primarily by a thirst for glory. Part of him desires to live a long, easy life, but he knows that his personal fate forces him to choose between the two. Ultimately, he is willing to sacrifice everything else so that his name will be remembered. Like most Homeric characters, Achilles does not develop significantly over the course of the epic. Although the death of Patroclus prompts him to seek reconciliation with Agamemnon, it does not alleviate his rage, but instead redirects it toward Hector. The event does not make Achilles a more deliberative or self-reflective character. Bloodlust, wrath, and pride continue to consume him. He mercilessly attacks his enemies, shamefully desecrates the body of Hector, and sacrifices twelve Trojan men at the funeral of Patroclus. He does not relent in this brutality until the final book of the epic, when King Priam, begging for the return of Hector's desecrated corpse, appeals to Achilles' memory of his father, Peleus. Yet it remains unclear whether a father's heartbroken pleas really have transformed Achilles, or whether this scene merely testifies to Achilles' capacity for grief and acquaintance with anguish, which were already proven in his intense mourning of Patroclus.

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