Karishma ’s Reviews > The Song of Achilles > Status Update

I N THE DARKNESS, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk.
Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns
pouring out of the sun.

There, at last, is his heart. Blood spills
between shoulder blades, dark and slick as oil. Achilles smiles as his face
strikes the earth.

It is right to seek peace for the dead. You and I
both know there is no peace for those who live after

I have killed a son of Zeus, but it is not enough. They must think it is
Achilles who has done it.

This book made me hate Agamemnon so passionately.

My feet seek
infinitesimal chips in the god-cut rocks. I am not graceful, but scrabbling,
my hands clawing against the stone before they cling. Yet I am climbing. I
will crack their uncrackable city, and capture Helen, the precious gold yolk
within. I imagine dragging her out under my arm, dumping her before
Menelaus. Done. No more men will have to die for her vanity.

I saw their drivers looking back
fearfully, frantically, at Achilles reborn phoenix-like from his sulking rage.

This is his truest self, earnest
and guileless, full of mischief but without malice. He is lost in Agamemnon
and Odysseus’ wily double meanings, their lies and games of power. They
have confounded him, tied him to a stake and baited him.

“What has Hector ever done to me?”