Achilles' Shield

Homer’s world of the Iliad glorifies war and heroism. In that world, Thetis, mother of Achilles, asks Hephaestus, Greek god of blacksmiths, artisans, and metallurgy to forge a shield for her son Achilles, the greatest Greek hero of the Trojan War. On this magnificent shield, Hephaestus emblazoned a microcosm of the Greek world using all the fine metals: gold, silver, copper, tin. The shield depicts a microcosm of the world, and life in ancient Greece and represents the grandeur of war and the serenity of peace.

Since Trump has entered the White House, he has emblazoned the residence with gold appliqués, gold inscriptions, and gold ornaments to transform the residence into his “gilded age of greatness.” What can all this gold signify? It is Trump’s shield, his projection and affirmation of his heroic grandeur. (Trump’s “gold shield” has been forged by his “gold guy” from Florida rather than a Greek god.) This gaudy gilt is a manifestation of Trump’s self-glorification. As Thomas B. Edsail documents in his New York Times essay, Trump is a “malignant” narcissist who possesses “little external capacity for self-soothing or self-valuation” and requires “continuous external affirmations to feel real and intact.”

That Trump needs to see gold everywhere to verify his worth is one symptom of his narcissism. His need to dominate universities, law firms, and other nations is another, much more disturbing manifestation of his narcissistic personality disorder. Recently he has threatened to take Greenland by force, and since Greenland has extensive self-rule over domestic matters and Denmark handles its defense and foreign policy, Trump has threatened to use tariffs as weapons against European countries if they do not accept his demands to buy that vast island. Greenland, where U.S. troops have always been welcome, definitively stated they do not want to be part of the United States. They clearly prefer Denmark to the U.S. Trump claims to be motivated by national security concerns, but it is his fantasy to see his name in future history books as the president who acquired the largest territory ever to become part of the U.S. For him, this is another attempt at self-aggrandizement and would elevate him in glory above all previous and future presidents. This move against Greenland threatens to undermine NATO, not only vexing, but also placing member nations in jeopardy after 76 years of cooperation.

With Greenland fearing an American invasion, with ICE troops terrorizing the people of Minneapolis, and with regular army troops mobilizing to deploy there, the predictions that Trump would become a tyrant if elected now seem disturbingly prescient.

The poet W. H. Auden (1907-1973) saw the effect 20th century tyrants and world wars had on humanity. In his poem, “The Shield of Achilles,” Auden’s reworks Homer’s idealized art into terrifying visions of political totalitarianism and social depravity:

    
The Shield of Achilles

    She looked over his shoulder
       For vines and olive trees,
    Marble well-governed cities
       And ships upon untamed seas,
    But there on the shining metal
       His hands had put instead
    An artificial wilderness
       And a sky like lead.

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
   No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
   Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
   An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.

Out of the air a voice without a face
   Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
   No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
   Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

    She looked over his shoulder
       For ritual pieties,
    White flower-garlanded heifers,
       Libation and sacrifice,
    But there on the shining metal
       Where the altar should have been,
    She saw by his flickering forge-light
       Quite another scene.

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
   Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
   A crowd of ordinary decent folk
   Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.

The mass and majesty of this world, all
   That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
   And could not hope for help and no help came:
   What their foes liked to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.

    She looked over his shoulder
       For athletes at their games,
    Men and women in a dance
       Moving their sweet limbs
    Quick, quick, to music,
       But there on the shining shield
    His hands had set no dancing-floor
       But a weed-choked field.

A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
   Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
   That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
   Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.

    The thin-lipped armorer,
       Hephaestus, hobbled away,
    Thetis of the shining breasts
       Cried out in dismay
    At what the god had wrought
       To please her son, the strong
    Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
       Who would not live long.

Auden’s poem lays out a structure of apparent contrast between the ancient Greek and modern worlds. The contrast between these two worlds reflects what Thetis expects Hephaestus to create, and what actually appears on the shield. Looking over Hephaestus’ shoulder in stanza 1, Thetis anticipates bucolic images of life and orderly communities: “She looked over his shoulder / for vines and olive trees, / Marble well-governed cities” and instead sees “An artificial wilderness / And a sky like lead.” In stanza 2, this lifeless, colorless picture evolves further into “A plain without a feature, bare, and brown,” where “An unintelligible multitude” of “A million eyes, a million boots” (of soldiers) await their orders. Those orders come in stanza 3 when a faceless voice directs the soldiers to march mindlessly toward the suffering and death they are ordered to inflict. The “logic” legitimizing their orders is supported by “statistics” and therefore the soldiers obey their orders without questioning the rationale to attack others. (Reminds one of Mark Kelly, etc., reminding military men and women to be alert to illegal military orders in contrast to following orders blindly.)

In stanza 4, Thetis searches the emerging shield for images of religious ceremonies of “ritual pieties / White flower-garlanded heifers / Libations and sacrifice,” but Hephaestus has etched “Quite another scene.” That scene, depicted in stanza 5, is a prison camp enclosed with “Barbed wire” detaining three prisoners, while a “crowd of ordinary decent folk / Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke.” Auden’s irony is unmistakable and the religious images of “three posts driven upright in the ground,” followed by the details of stanza 6, tell the reader that an incredibly cruel execution about to take place is simply the murder of innocent men.

In stanza 7, Thetis looks one last time over Hephaestus’ shoulder, expecting to see scenes of great athletic competition and men and women sweetly dancing to music, only to view a “weed-choked field” in which a “ragged urchin” wanders without purpose and cruelly throws a stone at frightened bird. At this point in the poem, Hephaestus’ artistic impetus for crafting these scenes on Achilles’ shield becomes clear. Human cruelty and violence are endemic to human nature and are “axioms to him, (Hephaestus) who never heard / Of any world where promises were kept, / Or one could weep because another wept.”

Auden’s poem might seem an extreme exaggeration in comparison to America under Trump, but poetry can reveal painful truths more powerfully than prose. In the poem, poor Thetis looks “over [Hephaestus’] shoulder” as he constructs a new shield. She anticipates “ritual pieties,” but image after image display the brutal reality Auden’s witnessed in the modern world, during and after World War II. The last stanza contains words that could be uttered by many in Minneapolis:

Thetis of the shining breasts
       Cried out in dismay
    At what the god had wrought.