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The Iliad Is a Great War Text

In: Historical Events

Submitted By mimifahe
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A war text is a text in which major characteristics of war prevail; scenes of war, heroes are described in action, military leaders, and courage are depicted in such text. The story of the Iliad by Homer describes fifty latter days at the Trojan War. The book is a classical epic poem that vividly describes brass armaments and mortal blows in combat. It also glorifies battle, violence, bloodshed, relates vicissitudes of fortune and the prominence of god intervention in human affairs. The book is a great war book in a sense that the story takes place in a war environment, it has leaders, heroes, who demonstrate courage throughout the book.
A-Presence of a war
For a Great War text to exist, it must be a war. There was definitely a war in the Iliad by Homer: the Trojan. This War began after the abduction (or elopement) of Queen Helen of Sparta, spouse of King Menelaus, by the Trojan prince Paris. This was an insult to the king. Then all the Achaeans (Greeks) got together to fight the Trojans in order to take Helen back from the Trojans. Everything started because of a selfish act from Paris. Nine years of war, thousands of people dead from both sides, just because one person decides to please himself, regardless of the consequences.
War is described in a complex way by Homer. On one hand he is condemning the war by painting a very morbid and perverse image of it. Indeed, Homer starts the Iliad by describing all the pain felt by the Achaeans and the deaths, of thousands of men in the war, as a result of Achilles’ anger who refuses to fight for the Greeks any further because insulted by Agamemnon who took his concubine as his own. Homer appears to be portraying the war negatively, mentioning the pain and men going to the ‘house of Hades’ in their thousands (Homer, 2000, Book 1), which is all negative imagery. The author then goes on to mention that these men “gave

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