The Triumph of Achilles

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1985

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“The Triumph of Achilles” is a free-verse poem with 20 lines. This means that there is no set line length, stanza length, or rhyme scheme. Stanzas vary in length from two lines to seven lines long. Lines vary in length from four syllables to 12 syllables. This wide variance in line length means that the meter also varies throughout the poem.

However, the poem does have a turn (which is sometimes called a volta) halfway through. In Line 10, the speaker offers a different avenue of thought—changing from absolute terms (like “always” in Lines 6 and 9) to questioning The Nature of Legends. This turn also reflects the theme of The Nature of Grief, highlighting how Achilles survives Patroclus (that is, Achilles lives longer than Patroclus in the Trojan War) in the second half of the poem.

Enjambment

Throughout the poem, Gluck uses enjambment, which is continuing a sentence across multiple lines. One example of enjambment within a stanza is between Lines 4 and 5. Line 4 includes a complete sentence, “Patroclus resembled him,” followed by a semicolon and a sentence fragment: “they wore.“ Line 5, “the same armor,” completes the sentence after the semicolon. (Semicolons join two complete sentences.) The line break between Lines 4 and 5 gives the symbol of Achilles’s armor its own line. This alludes to a long passage in Homer’s Iliad about the shield of Achilles. Rather than spend as many lines as Homer did describing the shield, Gluck simply gives the armor the space of its own line to highlight its importance. Narratively, Patroclus dies because he wears Achilles’s armor into battle, and this is also highlighted with the enjambment between Lines 4 and 5.

There is also enjambment across stanzas in the version of the poem published in Gluck’s collection The First Four Books of Poems. Some sources print the last six lines of the poem as one stanza, but this 1995 edition places a stanza break between Lines 17 and 18. In this case, one sentence continues across two stanzas:

In his tent, Achilles

grieved with his whole being

and the gods saw

he was a man already dead, a victim

of the part that loved,

the part that was mortal (Lines 15-20).

Here, the enjambment between stanzas highlights what the gods witness. The fifth (and final) stanza describes what part of Achilles dies when Patroclus dies. This is a contrasting reflection of the first stanza, which notes that both Achilles and Patroclus die during the Trojan War. The final stanza emphasizes how the human part of Achilles dies when Patroclus dies. The wrathful part of Achilles that avenges Patroclus’s death is inhuman, beyond grief and love.

Repetition

In addition to the repetition of “always” in Lines 6 and 9, Gluck repeats other key words in the poem. She repeats the word “one” four times: once in Lines 2 and 12, and twice in Lines 7. This emphasizes the solitariness of The Nature of Grief, as the last repetition is “the one who has been abandoned” (Lines 12). Gluck’s poem focuses on Achilles, who is set apart in Homer’s Iliad because he initially does not want to fight with the other Greek soldiers, and later by his grief over the death of Patroclus.

Another word that is repeated is “part,” which appears in Lines 19 and 20. This alludes to the myth that Achilles had one human part—his heel—that was not dipped in the River Styx. Gluck builds upon this mythological context to argue that the human part of Achilles is the part that loves and grieves. Humanity is not merely the opposite of divine or immortal, but is defined through emotions that all people share.