Achiles’ Shield in the Iliad Essay -- Literature Art War Papers

Achiles harbour as an Element of Contradistinction in the Iliad The Iliad is an large of death. It is a tale of conflict, battle, agony, and horrific mutilation. Honor and glory are succeed finished warfare. The great shield of Achiles stands out in this context because it depicts the glories of an orderly, functioning, generative civilization. This depiction of life stands in stark contrast to the scenes of death that compensate a large portion of the narrative. An examination of the shield of Achiles in kors Iliad reveals many ideas in conflict love and honor, the pleasures of life versus a heroic death, free will and destiny. By viewing the shield as an element of contradistinctionthat is to define it on the basis of contrastone rear see that the shield symbollicaly unifies the entire poem. Achiles shield is the mechanism through which the poet presents a tool of warfare as a reflection of civilization explores the concept, structure, and nature of the universe and exa mines the role of art in society.I. A Reflection of Civlization on a Tool of WarfareIn the epic tradtion, the arming of wariors for batle holds incident significance. The description of a wariors fit out tels much about the case-by-case character of the warior and about the values of the society of which he is part. The Iliad contains many much(prenominal) arming scenes which take the simple description of accouterments and transform it into a more expansive and iluminating portrait of ancient Greek mentality. When compared with one another, these descriptions of armor reveal some basic distinctions that make the shield of Achiles of utmost importance.As noted by Atchity in Homers Iliad The Shield of Memory, the armor of Paris is described in book thre... ...contradictions. Art is the medium through which humans explore lifes great questions and test its boundaries. fortify with the belief that ordered civlization will prevail, the artistpoet, metalworker, painter, actoris fr ee to throw in into the batlle of ideals.Works CitedAtchity, Kenneth John. Homers Iliad The Shield of Memory. Carbondale, IL Southern Ilinois Univ., 1978.Becker, Andrew Sprague. The Shield of Achiles and the Poetics of Ekphrasis. Lanham, MD Rowman & Litlefield, 1995.Duethorn, Guenter A. Achiles Shield and the Structure of the Iliad. Amherst, MA Amherst Colege, 1962.Edwards, Mark W. The Iliad A Commentary. Vol. V books 1720. G.S. Kirk gen. ed. Cambridge, MA 1995.Homer. The Iliad. Trans. Richmond Latimore. Chicago Univ. of Chicago, 1961. Keats, John. Ode to a Grecian Urn. 4 Oct. 2003 htp//www.poets.org/poems/.