Violence In The Iliad And The Godfather

In primitive societies where law and order was in its formative stage and man’s irrational thinking and animalistic instinct were not checked by reason, violence was, then, his only source of knowledge. It is this universe that we encounter in The Iliad through the theme of violence. Homer’s ability to fathom in such a villainous world where bloodshed and savagery of all kinds are persistent among men pushes us, modern readers, to question the morality of bygone ages. However, the most compelling question that contemporary readers ask is that despite the presence of low and order in current societies, the same barbarous world is represented in works such as Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. This simultaneous universe in the two works is what Messenger …show more content…
In The Iliad men die gruesome deaths, women become captive slaves, and kids got thrown and crushed like insects. It was a period of war atrocities and only the ones with violent spirits survived in such a horrific atmosphere. From the rage of Achilles to the death of Hector, The Iliad is a tale of violent men and violent deeds. Countless passages reveal the ferocity of Achilles and his slaying sword, for instance, in some scenes we see Achilles feeling triumphant by hitting warriors with his spear in their heads, splitting their skull apart (The Iliad, 445). In another famous scene about the great confrontation between ‘swift footed’, Achilles, and ‘tamer of horses’, Hector, Homer depicts the way Achilles struck a spear in Hector’s neck with his heavy bronze spear and purposely not killed him right away so that he sings his triumphs on him enjoying his suffering to the last minute (The Iliad, 494). One last example about Achilles’s savagery toward his foeman which best summarizes his violent nature can be demonstrated in the following passage. Achilles killed many warriors by the shore of a river, that by some divine power that river spoke and asked Achilles to