Summary
Chapter 31 opens with a brief passage in the third person as Achilles waits for news. The Greeks are winning, and soon Agamemnon will kneel, but he feels numb. He sees the armies fight over someone’s body. Patroclus will be back soon to tell him whose body it is.
When he sees that the body is Patroclus’s, he goes to slit his own throat but realizes he gave his sword to Patroclus (here the narration returns to the first person: “he gave the sword to me.”) He rips out his hair and will not let go of Patroclus’s body, even to kill Odysseus. Patroclus is trapped in his body in a half-life as an unburied spirit. Briseis wails; Thetis is disgusted but promises to bring Achilles new armor for his fight with Hector tomorrow.
Agamemnon comes to reconcile with Achilles, but Achilles says he wishes Patroclus had let them all die.
Achilles finds Briseis cleaning Patroclus’s body, and he’s furious. She accuses him of forcing Patroclus to die, caring only for himself—he never deserved Patroclus, and she hopes that Hector kills him. Achilles hopes he will as well.
Achilles cradles Patroclus’s corpse all night. Thetis brings him armor in the morning, and Achilles doesn’t wait for the rest of the army. He begins killing Trojans, chasing Hector, who flees wearing Achilles’ own armor. The nearby river, the Scamander, becomes choked with the blood and corpses of the men Achilles kills. Hector swims across, but when Achilles pursues, the river god Scamander fights him. Achilles wounds Scamander, winning the battle, by tricking him into thinking he stumbled—using human failure as bait.
In a grove at the base of Troy’s walls, Hector stops running. He asks Achilles to give his body to his family, which Achilles denies, throwing a spear through his throat. Achilles drags Hector’s body behind his chariot back to his camp. Thetis urges him to return the body to Hector’s family, but Achilles will not.
Achilles sleeps for the first time since Patroclus died, and Patroclus’s spirit urges him to burn his body and bury him properly, but Achilles wakes up, believing Patroclus is alive, and grieves again.
The next day, Achilles drags Hector’s body around the walls of Troy at dawn, midday, and evening. Thetis tells him to stop and that he is being childish—his son, Neoptolemus, is more of a man than him; the Fates have said that Troy can’t be taken until Pyrrhus comes, the next Aristos Achaion. Thetis tells Achilles that she is glad Patroclus is dead; she leaves.
In the deepest part of the night, Priam sneaks into Achilles’ camp and kneels before him to beg for his son’s body. Achilles greets him with hospitality, giving him food and wine, though neither eats. Achilles calls Patroclus philtatos, most beloved, and has his servants prepare Hector’s body to be sent home with Priam.
Achilles burns Patroclus’s body the next day, gathering the ashes himself even though it’s a woman’s duty. He charges the Greeks to mingle his ashes with Patroclus’s and bury them together.
Now that Hector and Sarpedon are dead, Achilles fights through other great Anatolian fighters who come to challenge him, and as he does, the narration’s description of him becomes more and more dehumanized—it is just his face, his body, his shoulders doing the killing. He kills Troilus, the youngest son of Priam, so Paris prepares to shoot Achilles, asking Apollo where to shoot him. Apollo says to shoot him anywhere and he will die—he is mortal. Apollo touches the fletching of Paris’s arrow, and Achilles smiles as the arrow pierces his heart and he falls.
Sea-nymphs clean Achilles’ body, and the Myrmidons build his pyre, but many of those watching don’t cry: the men, Briseis, and Thetis. Thetis refuses to gather Achilles’ ashes, so servant girls collect them and put them in the urn with those of Patroclus, who feels nothing. Before they are buried, Achilles’ son, Neoptolemus (AKA Pyrrhus), arrives to win the war, and he refuses to let Patroclus’s name be put on the tomb beside his father’s. Patroclus is trapped as a spirit.
Pyrrhus questions Briseis, who tries to stab him, then runs. He lets her swim very far before killing her with a spear; her body is not found. Patroclus haunts the dreams of the Greeks, begging them to write his name on the tomb to give him peace, but no one answers.
Troy falls, in part due to Odysseus’s horse and the army, but mostly due to Pyrrhus: he kills Priam; he brutally murders Hector’s infant son; he takes Andromache, Queen Hecuba, and the young princess Polyxena as prisoners. As a final sacrifice to his father before leaving, he kills Polyxena and offers her blood to Achilles’ tomb—the taste of it disgusts Patroclus.
On the night before the Greeks leave, Patroclus begs Odysseus for help in his sleep. Odysseus goes to Pyrrhus and does his best to convince him, but Pyrrhus still won’t put Patroclus’s name on the tomb and taint his father’s honor (therefore his own). The Greeks leave. Achilles has gone to the underworld, and Patroclus is trapped forever in his ashes.
Over time, people visit Achilles’ grave, carving his accomplishments on the tomb: killing, killing, and more killing. When Thetis visits, Patroclus does his best to reach her, and eventually she responds. Pyrrhus is dead, killed by Agamemnon’s son for raping his bride. Patroclus shares his nonviolent memories of Achilles with her, and in return Thetis shares memories with him: How it felt to be raped by Peleus and feel his child growing inside her, comforted only by the Fates’ prophecy of her child's greatness—which, she believes, is why the gods shackled her to a human, fearing a full-blooded son with that prophecy would be too great. She admits that she can’t visit Achilles because only the dead can go to the underworld, and she is immortal. Patroclus shares more memories of Achilles, intimate moments, love; at the end of the day, she carves Patroclus’s name into the tomb, telling him to go to her son—he is waiting.
In darkness, two shadows touch, and light pours from their hands.
Analysis
The final three chapters of the novel are narrated by Patroclus’s disembodied spirit, tied to his ashes until he is properly honored with his name on his memorial. Patroclus “outliving” Achilles in this way is not a feature of the Iliad, but it does line up with his own prediction of spending days missing Achilles after his prophesied early death. This is a reversal of the dramatic irony built through the book: While the reader knows Patroclus will die first, Patroclus and Achilles do not; however, Patroclus’s spirit does live on, so his fears were right all along.
Though the book deals with war, it rarely describes the specific war crimes committed—Patroclus hears the screams of the women at night, but the word “rape” is rarely used; though it’s obvious the Greeks and Trojans are killing one another, it’s implied to be honorable killing on the battlefield. Even Achilles killing all of Andromache’s family members save one is glossed over. The exception is in Miller’s description of Pyrrhus, whose horrible actions are outlined: his implied rape of Andromache, who gathers her clothes when Odysseus enters the tent; the stated rape of a young Greek newly wedded princess; the horrible murder of Hector’s infant son; the slitting of Polyxena's throat on Achilles’ tomb in a way that forces Patroclus to taste the blood. This is what Thetis would have had Achilles become, and by stating Pyrrhus’s atrocities clearly, Miller makes it clear that Achilles without humanity is a monster.
Thetis seems to realize the same thing. She begins to visit Achilles’ tomb after Pyrrhus’s death, because Pyrrhus has left nothing good behind to mourn. It turns out Achilles’ mortality had value she couldn’t see, in her relentless pursuit of making him a god. Her immortality now stops her from ever seeing her son again, but in talking to Patroclus, she learns about the parts of him she neglected in his time on earth.
Two phrases recur throughout the novel. The first is adults asking Patroclus “Do you understand?”—his father, Thetis, Peleus, and in a way even Chiron ask him this. The second is a phrase Patroclus uses when sharing his love with and/or of Achilles. As boys, they share together—skipping stones, juggling figs, telling each other “this and this and this.” When they’re discovering their sexual love for each other, they explore each other’s bodies, finding “this, and this and this.” Its final iteration is in this scene with Thetis, as Patroclus shares everything he knew and loved about Achilles: “This, I say. This and this.” For the first time, Thetis listens to Patroclus, and she understands. This phrase is used in place of great, romantic language or lists; it understates or obscures the specifics of what Patroclus shares, but it also captures the multitude of that list, as well as its flexibility. Patroclus loves and shares everything with Achilles. Not just three things—everything. This and this, repeated, forever.
The Song of Achilles is a love story set against a background of war and fate, and it poses many questions about that background. When someone asks you to fight, how do you answer? While Achilles says yes and joins Agamemnon in waging war on Troy, perhaps he and Patroclus would have had a happier life in that long obscurity, finding greatness in the small, everyday things Patroclus adores. When is it okay to kill someone? Patroclus comes to the conclusion that there is no answer; whoever you choose to kill, you are wrong. The answer is more complicated for people like Achilles, who are literally predestined to kill, and it is more complicated for society at large. The Greeks and Trojans are combat-driven societies, and that is difficult to change without reinvention and re-imagination. The novel invites consideration of what other societies might look like: Imagine what the world would be if Odysseus, Patroclus, or even Briseis were Aristos Achaion.
