Achilles' Rage

"You talk of food?
I have no taste for food--what I really crave
is slaughter and blood and the choking groans of men!"

It is easy to view Achilles' rage as a spectator.  Inexorably waiting by his ships while the Argives die in droves, Achilles personifies the spoiled brat who creates havoc to feed his self-righteousness.  Fully conscious of his absence's impact, he clearly expresses his desire to wait for enemy forces to reach the Hellespont before he'll re-engage Hector and the Trojans. Only the loss of his dear friend Patroclus stirs him to action.  From this angle, it is difficult to see how mass destruction of both Greek and Trojan forces bolsters Achilles or either warring faction.  I say this while believing in, although not willingly embracing, the concept of regenerative destruction as a means to attain grace.  There is no serenity in the Iliad--even the reconciliation between Achilles and Priam in Book XXIV holds more resignation than acceptance.  Thus it's easy to point fingers at Achilles--and Agamemnon in his own ego-centric destruction--because no matter my proclivity to clench my anger in my belly or bite my nose to spite my face, my behavior cannot possibly be as bad as that of these "heroes." 

Yet in judging Achilles, I am projecting my rage on him.  I am able to deflect my destructive tendencies in much the same way as a petty thief discounts her culpability by comparing her pilfering of a trifle to the charlatans who trick senior citizens out of their life savings.  And so the study of Achilles' rage demands introspection rather than projection: why is rage, which destroys, so fulfilling that it overwhelms the desire for food, which nurtures? 

Achilles is a far more complicated persona than the warrior who allows his comrades to die because he lost his girl to a man so self-serving he sacrificed his daughter so he could take up sword and shield.  Achilles repeatedly tells those who beg his return to battle that "The same honor waits/for the coward and the brave.  They both go down to Death,/the fighter who shirks, the one who works to exhaustion."  And he echoes those words in the Underworld, when he tells Odysseus he'd rather be a slave on earth than king of the dead.  Fully aware of his fated glorious death, Achilles' anger is valid.  But can his actions, or mine or anyone else's, also be justified?  In many ways, life is a series of losses and how we deal with them, whether the timely death of an aged parent or friend, or the sudden losses that seem particularly unfair, defines us.  Our rage seems to fulfill us but, perhaps, we are not so unlike Achilles, as we willing encourage our anger's potential to blot out the pains of life's vicissitudes, especially those that force us to face our mortality.