Among the numerous back and forth dialogues, this one stroke me as quite dramatic so I will briefly talk about it. It occurs on page 8, lines 92-108, I won’t retype it here because it can easily be found within the book.
Anyway, there are a lot of things packed into this harangued uttering which are quite notable to mention:
After calling them some names, he starts with saying “Fools on both sides!” This goes hand-in-hand with what our teacher said in class about the meaningless war – well from our point of view. Back then Helen was considered a major prize and represented a whole country, a symbol, so all the valiant soldiers were up in arms to rescue her, not only for her patriotic representative beauty but also for their country’s emblem.
Furthermore, the character here uses some dramatic metaphorical imagery such as the line, “When with your blood you daily paint her thus.” This means she is painted in blood, because well, war is bloody and this will be no exception, even though technically they are fighting over one woman hehe.. well also their pride as well.
I mean there are many lines here of discussion here, also when he says “It is too starved a subject for my sword,” which was another mentioned line in class. I remember our teacher paralleled-compared this line with recent warfare events – something that societies have been looking into justifying war acts.
These are just some of the briefly worthwhile things to mention in this speech which seems to be directed at one self.
Well any comments, discussions, questions .. feel free to contribute.
-Thanks.
We’ll discuss the significance of the term “fools,” which takes on added significance when one has met Thersites.