Grief and the Hero

Grief and the Hero examines Achilles' experience of the futility of grief in the context of the Iliad 's study of anger. No action can undo his friend Patroklos' death, but the experience of death drives him to behave as though he can achieve something restorative. Rather than assuming that grief gives rise to anger, as most scholars have done, Grief and the Hero pays close attention to the poem's representation of the origin of these emotions.