RARA-AVIS: heroes/Achilles

From: Carrie Pruett ( pruettc@hotmail.com)
Date: 25 Jul 2002


Miker wrote:

>A couple of examples from THE
>ILIAD: Achilles - the greatest warrior of his time, was a practising
>homosexual - he shares a tent with Patrocolus & goes into a killing >rage
>when his lover is killed in battle by Hector, the Trojan champion.

Quite apart from the question of why any of this would make Achilles
"flawed," this simply isn't true. There's no reference in the Iliad to Achilles and Patroclus being lovers, that's a post-Homeric gloss put on the story by later Greeks and Romans.

Steering this back on topic, I don't have any trouble seeing Rebus as a hero. He's not exactly Chandler's tarnished knight, but he's got a drive to get to the bottom of things, and punish the bad guys, that I think is fundamentally the same thing that gives most detective- heroes their appeal.
  I don't really see him representing a different "type" than the American HB hero though, I don't see him being that different from Harry Bosch or even Sam Spade.

carrie
- Pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked - Jane Austen

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