Civilization and Savagery in The Iliad.

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        English ISU        May 27 2003

Civilization and Savagery in The Iliad

The urge to compete is a large part of the human psyche.  When this sense of competitiveness is taken to the extreme, a war may erupt.  Throughout the history of humanity wars have been waged, even before the advent of writing, when poets where there to capture their essence.  The epic poem The Iliad by Homer describes a war that took place almost two thousand, seven hundred years ago.  The Greek society in which Homer lived was considered more violent than any in existence today.  This gave him all the inspiration needed to create an epic war poem.  By revealing to the reader the futility and horror of war, Homer’s Iliad offers an excellent critique of society, more specifically the fragility of human civilization and the savagery of human nature, when under the extreme pressures of combat.   This masterful piece of literature, although written in many centuries ago, has much insight on ancient Greek society that can still be applied, with a modern twist, to today’s world.

The style Homer used in his epic poem was unconventional and highly successful.  Compared to many other novels or poem of its time, as well as most modern pieces of literature, The Iliad is much longer.  This both helps and hinders the text’s ability to convey the messages and meanings of war.  In order to capture and preserve the audiences’ interest during such a long poem, Homer took the reader on adventures beyond the Trojan battle field and into the life of each individual solider.  By doing this, the reader feels drawn into the story and shares the horrors and futility the Greeks faced during the Trojan War.  A large part of Homer’s work is dedicated to war and battle scenes.  The main reason for this is because many believed Greek society, which took place seven hundred years before Christ, was brutally violent.  Fighting was an everyday occurrence and brought honour among the warriors.  The Greek gods did not dissipate the violent society; in fact they encouraged it by demanding animal sacrifices as part of daily rituals. It is this bloodlust, along with Homer’s original style, that has made The Iliad popular and highly influential to this day.

War stories depict, through their graphic imagery, the horrors and tragedies taking place during a battle and The Iliad is no exception.  The Iliad is most effective at portraying the futility and horrors of war throughout the text with all the gory details.  Homer does an excellent job at capturing the realism of each battle scene in over five thousand lines of prose, nearly one third of the poem.  As critic Martin Muller points out in Fighting in the Iliad “the poet and his audience like such [battle] scenes and their periodic occurrence require no greater motivation then bar-room brawls in a Western”.   The following quote illustrates Homers ability to evoke graphic images during a battle:

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The shaft pierced the tight belt’s twisted thongs,
piercing the blazoned plates, piercing the guard
he wore to shield his loins and block the spears,
his best defense—the shaft pierced even this,
the tip of the weapon grazed the man’s flesh,
and dark blood came spurting from the wound. (pg149, p2)

This quote gives the reader a clear image of what is happening as the shaft wounds the unfortunate soldier.  Homer also adds to the horrors of the war by telling us about the history of each individual solider before their death. With about two hundred and fifty names in the text, all with individual ...

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