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Auden's The Shield of Achilles (Presentation)
Auden's The Shield of Achilles (Presentation)
A0101522A
Dr. Susan Ang
EN4264: Modern Poetry
Week 5 Auden
emotional world,The Shield of Achilles, like every other poem, with only words, in
itself makes nothing [practical] happen.
Mythical method is a term coined by Eliot to decribe the intertextual employment of myth to
[manipulate] a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity. (Eliot)
2
The polysyllabic adjectives, Iron-hearted and man-slaying, by virtue of being a composite of
morphemes that do not necessarily go together, raise the question of alternatives. Instead of an ironhearted man-slaying warmonger, might not a modernised Achilles be a warm-hearted dragon-slaying
protector?
continuity from past to present, could be [a] way of happening; it invites a reevaluation of the value of glory in death vis-a-vis the value of life by throwing
Achilles heroism into doubt.
Yet, it is the pastness of the past that Auden precisely resists in employing the
mythical method that demonstrates how the past is still alive in the present and subject
to renegotiation. The Shield of Achilles despite, or in fact, precisely by looking
backwards in time, is [a] way of happening because perspective on the past affects
our thoughts and actions in the present and the future. The Shield of Achilles is a
mouth (In Mermory of W.B. Yeats, II.10), articulating the horrors of
contemporaneity through superimposition upon antiquity in a way that illustrates how
the past, present and future is shaped by our perspectives and worldviews. If we were
to pay attention to the innovative aspects of The Shield of Achilles, we will recognise the past and recognise how the past is capable of being repeatedly re-visioned
and re-written.
recoups the value of ritual pieties (24) by elevating them over the humiliation and
dehumanisation meted out by an ungodly and callous (bored) (22) authority.
Audens use of the phrase should have been (28) does more than highlight the
discrepancy between what is known and expected based on Homers epic, the
progenitor of this modern verse, versus what is presently depicted in this new
creation. The phrase bespeaks Audens preference for the dying traditions that he
attempts to ressurect by raising the ghost of the altar in the readers consciousness.
Evidently, Auden as accessed through his poetic voice, is not as neutral as discussed
earlier. By setting up a dichotomy between past and present, Auden not only suggests
that the present can be other than what it is but also advances that it should be
different from what it is.
The way forward, Auden covertly puts forth, seems not to be a continuation
down the slippery slope of human progress but a return to a peacful pastoral past.
Nostalgia for a bygone Golden Age where fields are filled with gold, with harvest
corn (Homer, XVIII), and where the land is fertile with vines and olive trees (2) is
made palpable in the recurring structural oppositions between expectation and reality.
Three times, [Thetis] looked over [Hepahestos] shoulder/For (1-2 etc.) something
she hopes to see on the shield, only to be disappointed again with the connector but
(5 etc.) that consistently signposts the failure of reality to correspond with her
imagination. But there on the shining metal/ His hands had put instead (5-6) of a
verdant landscape, a concrete jungle, [a]n artificial wilderness and a wasteland:
Instead of boys and girls dancing in harmony with one another as on Homers
shield that reflects Homers world, the axiom[atic] (57) reality of Audens
world/shield is [t]hat girls are raped by virtue of being physically weaker and two
boys knife [metaphorically and/or literally] a third who is unable to oppose their
combined strength (56). Through the characterisation of the urchin, we learn that
these abuses of power are not only normative but unquestionable (axioms) in his
world (57-58). In this warped world, beauty is substituted by misery, the "boy who
made sweet music with his lyre, and sang the Linos-song with his clear boyish voice"
(Homer, XVIII), is replaced by a ragged urchin (53), a victim of violence, who in
turn becomes the perpertrator of violence. The absence of any mention of a prior
attack from the bird implies that the boy was not acting in self-defense but is picking
on his physical inferior to pay forward the violence he has suffered in the hands of
someone with superior power. The boy has ostensibly been corrupted by a society
desensitised to violence and is caught in the chain of violence that echoes Audens
aphorism in September 1, 1939, Those to whom evil is done/ Do evil in return.
(21-22).
Regrettably, modern society has selectively inherited the worst of Achilles, his
vengeful spirit, while failing to continue Achilles legacy of honour and compassion.
Unlike in Homers world, there is no trust or empathy in the urchins world, only
domination and selfishness. To emphasise the depravity of the world the urchin
lives in, Auden uses two absolutes in the desciption, never heard/ Of any world
where promises were kept,/Or one could weep because another wept (58-59).
Contrastingly, in Homers world, Achilles avenges Patroclus death to make up for his
failure to uphold his promise to return Patroclus to his father and takes pity on
Hectors father who pleads to bury his son. In this light, the tragic description of the
urchins ignorance is rendered ironic. While the urchin is artistically embedded in
Homers world, we are culturally embedded in Homers world and as heirs of this
world where promises are honoured and empathy is exemplified, we are reasonably
expected to possess a notion of a world like Homers, a world more honourable and
compassionate, a world that we can revisit and realise (to some extent).
Hectors corpse that is subliminally brought to mind through Thetis desire to see
Hephaestos render on the shield atheletes at their games. During the atheletic
matches held in honour of Patroclus, Achilles has Hectors corpse ignobly dragged by
the heels behind his chariot. Scrutiny of The Illiad further reveals that rape is not
foreign but part and parcel of Greek military culture that uses females are battle prizes
and so reduces them to commodities that can be passed, independently of their will,
from one male to another.
Works Cited
Auden, W.H. September 1, 1939
Auden, W.H. In Memory of W.B. Yeats
Auden, W.H. The Shield of Achilles
Eliot, T.S. "Ulysses, Order and Myth." people.virginia.edu. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Sept.
2014. <http://people.virginia.edu/~jdk3t/eliotulyss
Homer, translated by Samuel Butler. "XVIII." The Iliad. Print.