Deron Lawrence, SJ

Hero and Fate in the Epic Tradition

Dr. Fajardo-Acosta

5 May 1998

The ‘Good Life’ in Epic Narratives

Classic literature juxtaposes two ways of life that illustrate the poles of true happiness: a life of adventure, exemplified by Odysseus (The Odyssey), and the life at home, which poets and farmers represent. In The Iliad, Achilleus chooses to live a short, glorious life, even though he could have chosen to live a long life in anonymity. Arguments have been put forth that the life of adventure is a living hell, as Achilleus testifies from Hades after his death - in hindsight, he would have settled for the life of a slave and given up his glory, if only he could have lived longer. Alternately, the life of the (metaphorical) farmer has been despised as simple and ordinary, when true immortality is only attained with great accomplishments, such as sacking Troy or surviving heroic adventures which are then recorded. In a modern day autobiography of the 1996 ascent of Mt. Everest (Sagarmatha to the Nepalis, or “goddess of the sky”), Jon Krakauer reveals the human motivation behind adventure and tells the story of the men and women who lived and died on the expeditions to the summit during that spring (Into Thin Air). With epic literature and a recent epic, I will illuminate the values of a reflective life as well as the life of adventure, and delve into the necessary components of the ‘good life.’

The Choice of Achilleus

I carry two sorts of destiny toward the day of my death. Either,

if I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans,

my return home is gone, but my glory shall be everlasting;

but if I return home to the beloved land of my fathers,

the excellence of my glory is gone, but there will be a long life

left for me, and my end in death will not come to me quickly.

-Achilleus (Iliad, IX.411)

The decision of Achilleus is a crucial moment in understanding how fate works in epic (Homerian) literature. Thetis tells Achilleus of his opportunity to win renown as the greatest warrior of all time, earning glory through his fearless acts in battle against a foe who is sure to overcome the Achaians. The fate of ten years of attack on Troy hinge upon the decision of Achilleus, who is given the choice to win glory for the Achaians and, more importantly, himself. The great warriors - Odysseus, Diomedes, and Aias - who have fought together against the Trojans, come to Achilleus and beg him to come to their aid, in a time when the strongest are wounded or dead and the battle has been carried to the ships of the Achaians. The olive branch of Agamemnon has been offered to Achilleus, to entice him back to battle so victory might be had. Yet for Achilleus, this peace offering is the ringing of the bells of death, because it has been foreseen that his glory is directly linked with death soon after.

In this scene, Achilleus is filled with wrath at Agamemnon because he stole Briseis and dishonored Achilleus in front of the Achaian army. Achilleus has held onto his anger at Agamemnon for this injustice, and his decision not to enter the fray at this time of the battle is based on his wrath - not upon his desire to live a long life. In this manner, Achilleus is making a choice out of anger, not out of desire based upon honorable intentions. Homer, in the character of Achilleus, presents the choice of the epic hero as the choice between glory and anonymity, between a short life and a long life; the decision for Achilleus is contingent upon his anger, and whether his motivations for battle and glory can be transformed from malevolent pride into honorable justice in battle, insofar as that is possible. Against Agamemnon, Achilleus tells Odysseus:

He cheated me and he did me hurt...

Let him of his own will

be damned, since Zeus of the counsels has taken his wits away from him.

I hate his gifts.

- Iliad IX.375

The intense anger against Agamemnon fuels Achilleus, and he fails to recognize the impact upon his life, his glory, and his fate to live or to die. Homer presents this choice as a long life or a short one, but the prediction is tied into Achilleus’ wrath. Does Achilleus have a choice about his wrath? Is he destined to win glory only by holding onto his wrath? Or is there a third option, not presented by Homer, of accepting the gifts Agamemnon offers? The question of how a good life is lived is contingent upon the actions of our hero, and when a short, glorious life is contrasted with a long, anonymous life, Homer presents a false dichotomy to reflect our choices in life.

The ‘good life’ requires honesty with oneself and humility with others. Achilleus’ mistake was to be vain, and to hold Agamemnon’s stupidity against him. The good life requires one to follow the path one most strongly hears calling him, but not any path can lead to the good life. Wrath in the good life will only turn the adventure sour. Murder, no matter how excellent, if only for the sake of perfecting one’s method, is extreme pride rather than devoted skill. The hero is a warrior at times, and faces dangers, and chooses these dangers over safety because it is in him to do. But the hero will face the eternity of misery Achilleus knows in death when he does not reflect on his motives and become the poet in life.

This presentation of life’s options for Homer is a choice between ‘the quest’, and the life of ‘the farmer.’ The quest represents action and adventure, and for Achilleus a life away from home. The farmer characterizes the home life, where family, growing crops, and raising animals in the context of important relationships in the community prevails. In The Odyssey, the life of Odysseus reveals a similar choice to be made, between adventure and living at home in Ithaca.

Odysseus

Odysseus is the epic adventurer, who even after twenty years still is unsure of whether he really wishes to return home to Ithaca. It was his cleverness that led to the final sacking of Troy, after ten years of a bloody siege, but this victory did not satiate his desire to war. During the attack on Troy, he lost many close friends and saw a tremendous amount of bloodshed, both from warriors on his side and on the side of the Trojans. Within Odysseus burned the unquenchable fire of the quest, which drove him onward from Troy to battle the Kikones to win their wine; yet more importantly, to win victory again. But it is on this shore that Odysseus realizes his desire to return home, to return to his wife and son and to the good life of his city.

It would seem that Odysseus is slow at realizing his long absence from family and home, but for the adventurer there never is a time when the desire for new conquests ever ends. When Odysseus leaves the Kikones, he is blown into many more adventures, with the Cyclops, the Lotus Eaters, Aeolus, and ultimately Hades. Some he chose, such as to explore the island of Polyphemus. Others he had no choice in, as when he was blown to the land of the Lotus Eaters. Odysseus is trying to find home, but is ambivalent because he also does not want to end the adventure. Yet Odysseus is not only a warrior, but also a poet and he has Athene’s guidance in wisdom to lead him home, along a torturous path which he creates with his choices.

And Odysseus

let the bright molten tears run down his cheeks,

weeping the way a wife mourns for her lord

on the lost field where he has gone down fighting

the day of wrath that came upon his children.

-The Odyssey (VIII.560)

Odysseus finally is liberated from his adventure by Zeus’ will, and reaches the land of Alkinoos where he is treated with the fullest hospitality expected for a stranger in the Greek tradition. It is in this environ that Odysseus hears the tale of the fall of Troy, and begins to feel the pain of his journey and the deaths of his companions. He recounts his story for the court, and in telling this tale he feels remorse for his actions that led to the deaths of his men. Odysseus also begins to remember the goodness of his home, and for the first time he passionately longs to return to Ithaca. It is Odysseus’ initiation into the role of a poet that allows him to yield to the urges of adventure momentarily, whereby he reflects on his journey and can take account for what is important in his life. In the Homerian tradition, though, this transformation of Odysseus is not perfect.

Odysseus returns to Ithaca and, with the cleverness of his patron Goddess, disguises himself as a beggar and assesses his situation at his former home. Eventually he develops a plan to overthrow the invaders and liberate his wife and city, and then is successful in regaining control of his home. At this point in the epic Odysseus betrays his lack of interior conversion. He hangs the unfaithful maidens, despite the many years of his own infidelity to Penelope. He mutilates the goatherd for similar reasons. He even kills all of Penelope’s suitors, even the ones who had mercy on him and fed him as a beggar! Odysseus has been starved, imprisoned, beaten, humiliated, and seemingly he had recognized how the mercy of others was behind his own longevity. Yet his actions toward the invaders reveals his lack of mercy, and even his lack of transformation and growth in understanding the nature of humanity. What is the reader to learn from Odysseus’ lesson? Who is an epic hero? Is there an option available for the hero apart from the choice given by Homer? More importantly, is the hero changed by his adventures?

Like Achilleus, Odysseus becomes the avenger - even though he has been shown mercy. Homer presents Odysseus in a similar fashion to Achilleus, who also showed extreme hubris against Hector. In Homer’s world, true change of the hero is not possible, even if the hero has moments where he can be the poet. In life, there truly is the very difficult challenge of changing one’s life toward goals and ideals one might hold for onesself, especially realized after moments where mercy is shown. The difficulty is to remember these moments and to grow in humility, so wrath and vengeance do not rule us when we are in the roles of power, like Odysseus upon regaining his kingdom.

Goddess of the Sky

I had recently decided to quit climbing and get serious about life...

I’d failed to appreciate the grip climbing had on my soul. I

didn’t anticipate the void that would loom in its absence.

Mountaineering was an essential expression of some odd,

immutable aspect of my personality that I could no sooner

alter than change the color of my eyes.

I wanted to climb the mountain as badly as I’d ever wanted anything

in my life.

-Krakauer (Into Thin Air.VI)

Both literal and literary mountaineering share the pursuit of a dangerous peak that is expensive to attain. The drive toward mountaineering is not an intellectual pursuit, but it begins with passion that cannot be ignored. If suppressed, unhappiness and depression are the common ailments that follow. On the other hand, success often leads to death. There is no middle ground, but only the choice to be impelled by the very nature that stirs from within.

Jon Krakauer joined one of a dozen expeditions seeking the summit of the world’s highest peak, Mt. Everest, in the spring of 1996. He had given up mountaineering and gotten married years before, but found climbing would not give him up. The strain of climbing nearly ended his marriage, but to halt his climbing would have been akin to earthly death. He continued mountaineering, despite the risks, because he did not have a choice in the matter.

Rob Hall was one of the world’s renown mountaineers in 1996, with a reputation for climbing akin to Achilleus’ own ability in war. Hall was the expedition leader for ten clients, including Krakauer, with the task of getting his people as high up the mountain as safely possible. His years of experience made him the most expensive and experienced man in the world to lead a group up the Himalayan slopes. Rob Hall also had a wife who was pregnant and due to give birth a month after his descent from Everest.

“People who don’t climb mountains tend to assume that the sport

is a reckless, Dionysian pursuit of ever escalating thrills. But the

notion that climbers are merely adrenaline junkies chasing a

righteous fix is a fallacy.”

-Krakauer (Into Thin Air.X)

Like the perils Achilleus faced in attacking Troy, or the dangers Odysseus met during his twenty years away from Ithaca, Hall and Krakauer sought to climb a mountain that kills 1 in 4 people who set out for its summit. These were married men with children, men who knew the risks and defied them. While Krakauer reached the summit and returned alive, Hall’s summit attempt was successful but he was caught on top by an afternoon storm. He guided a client to the summit, but had violated the turn-around time by three hours in order to reach the top. Upon descending, the client disappeared - no one knows what happened to him, but presumably he was blown from the mountain. Rob Hall descended part way, but hypothermia and frostbite stopped him from continuing. He spent this night and the next without bottled oxygen, and could not walk nor handle the ropes with his frostbitten fingers. His last conversation was with his wife in New Zealand, soon before he succumbed to the cold. Is this hubris? Why couldn’t he or Krakauer recognize their responsibilities to their wives and work in a safer environment? For Hall, the mountain had already been climbed. What impelled these men to pursue such dangers, and what glory or prize was awarded their success?

“Fiery is their vigour, and of heaven their source.”

-Aeneid (X)

Epic heros fight wars, cross oceans, and climb mountains because they do not really have a choice. That is, they could farm, but their death would occur each morning that they awoke to do the chores. Intellectually, Achilleus rejected the glory of battle for a long life many times throughout the battle of Troy; he succumbed in the end because the unique desires given him outweighed the logic of living a safe life. Likewise, Odysseus spent ten years trying to return home after the fall of Troy, but during these years he was often ambivalent and not really sure that home was what he desired after all. Mountaineers experience a similar fate, being drawn to new heights not only for the thrill or challenge, but because the desire to climb is the soulmate of life. The danger heros face is real and could lead to death, but how is the good life really lived?

“Better, I say, to break sod as a farm hand

For some poor country man, on iron rations,

Than lord it over all the exhausted dead.”

-Achilleus (The Odyssey.XI)

Achilleus speaks from Hades of his regret for having chosen a short life over a long one, even at the price of becoming a slave. In reviewing Achilleus’ death, it is clear that it resulted from his extreme wrath. This anger has stayed with Achilleus into the underworld, where he is most unhappy. For Achilleus, the misery of Hades is linked directly to his wrath and his inability to accept Agamemnon’s gift of repentance. Achilleus’ pride led him to the choice of glory and his grave, against which Homer presented no viable option.

Odysseus also acts with wrath at the end of the Odyssey, and he, too, is not happy with the outcome of his life. He has succeeded at all he set out to do, and has his home and family and city back with his throne. Yet in essence, Odysseus continues to be the same person he was at the beginning of the Iliad, a warrior king. The moments where he felt remorse and shed tears indicate how difficult change is for him, and his actions indicate a skepticism on the part of Homer regarding the ability of a person’s essence to be transformed.

Rob Hall also lived and died in his pride. Had he acted within the framework he set up before climbing, he would not have reached the summit, but he would have returned. Failure was not acceptable to him, and his pride was matched against the mountains intensity. He followed his passionate desires to climb, but it was not tempered with the reason wisened by reflection for which his success had depended in all earlier expeditions. He wasn’t quite poet enough to allow for a continuation of life.

Jon Krakauer survived Everest, and in returning alive and recording the adventure has become the poet. He has told the tragedy of Rob Hall, and this story has an appearance very similar to that of Achilleus. There seemed to be a choice between a short, glorious life, and a long, safe life lived on the flatlands. Krakauer appears to be living the life of one who would die young, and gloriously, because, though he has reflected upon and told his story, there is no sign that mountaineering will be put into the closet. Can the hero ever turn to farming? The choice of the hero is unavoidable, because for those who choose not to adventure there never is glory in success. He will never be a hero if he doesn’t go on an adventure. Can the farmer be the hero? Even Odysseus, who has apparently settled in the end of The Odyssey, is found in Virgil’s Aeneid to have met his death on an adventure even more perilous than his foray into Hades. What is the real challenge for the hero, and how is the good life found?

In humility, the good life is found. This seems a contradiction for the hero, who seemingly must be brazen and arrogant, but I propose that there is a balance among these qualities that allows for a poetic hero. Not all poetic heros would live a long life, but that is not necessarily the point of life. The farmer and the hero can live the good life only by doing what is in them to do. This is in our human nature, individually, to follow the desires and visions we have and to live them to the best of our ability. Odysseus, Achilleus, and Hall each lived their adventurous lives with vision and arrogance, believing themselves immortal on earth and beyond death’s reach. The hero’s challenge is to be the poet while not on his adventure, so through reflection and the telling of his story he might know the good elements from the ways he is courting false immortality. The second challenge, then, after understanding his limits, is to be able to act with reason as dictated by him in moments of being a poet.

The good life for the farmer or the hero is to do best what one loves, and to act with the humility of knowing one is not a god. Following what one loves is the key here. It is different that trying to live a long, safe life. It is also not motivated by wrath or anger, nor unduly impelled by false pride. The moment one steps out of the reality of humility, and knowing life is given onesself repeatedly, then the person loses touch with his mortality. The hero then becomes like a god, in his own mind, and does not continue to act out of the good desires in our hearts. False pride nurtures wrath, which brought the deaths of Achilleus and Odysseus and Hall. Long life and heroic adventure are not impossible. We are given free will, we do make choices and are free in the manner with which we respond to these choices. While there will always be risks in any worthy adventure, and a short life for the hero is always possible, while one is living with humility one is living the good life.