Odysseus Rex Speech Analysis

there is multiple occasions in which Achilles is attempted to be persuaded into fighting against the Trojans. Because of the hatred Achilles harbors for the king, Agamemnon, he refuses to accept the lavish gifts offered and fight for the good of the city. The two speakers Odysseus and Phoenix take two different approaches to persuade Achilles to stay and rejoin the fight. The first speaker, Odysseus, takes a more impersonal approach to the issue by formulating his speech with more logos rather than emotional appeal while Phoenix tries to connect with Achilles through his deep emotional and personal relationship with the hero. While both speaker’s speech contains appeals to logos, it is shown through Achilles’s response to each of the men …show more content…
Through the telling of this story, Phoenix utilizes both pathos and ethos in order to relate his own personal experience to the one Achilles’s is currently facing, and in order to establish his credibility as someone who helped to make Achilles into the brave warrior he is currently. In his past, Phoenix experienced a hardship with his father which ultimately led to his father calling a curse on him to the Furies. “Never, never let me bounce on my knees a son of his, sprung of his loins” (lines 554-556). This curse was the cause of Phoenix’s inability to have a son of his own. Later on in the story, though, this idea is paralleled when he describes the scene in which Achilles first sat on Phoenix’s own knees. He says, “ Never, until I’d sat you down on my knees and cut you the first bits of meat, remember?” By relating Achilles sitting on his own knees and his father cursing Phoenix from producing a child that will sit on his knees, he insinuates that Achilles is like the son he did not have. He goes on to draw the picture that Phoenix was a father of sorts to Achilles which comes with deep emotional ties. He’s appealing to Achilles’s emotional connection with him as generally people would do as much as possible save to save or help family. Phoenix then takes ownership for Achilles’s great success. He tells the hero “I made you what you are—strong as the gods”(lines 885). Phoenix does this in order to elicit a feeling of responsibility and loyalty from Achilles. Which is why he later states “I made you my son, I tried, so one day you might fight disaster off my back.” ( Lines 599 -600). Phoenix is clearly using the logic that because he raised and cared for Achille’s, now he is responsible for caring for Phoenix in return which would mean that Achilles needs to stay back and fight. He must fight not only for his honor and offered luxuries, but because he is