Great Achilles, brilliant Achilles, shining Achilles, godlike Achilles ....
How the epithets pile up. We never called him any of these "things"; we called him "the butcher".
Achilles and the Greek are butchers and Pat Barker doesn´t hold back in describing the atrocities these men are doing in the name of war.
I only know the sappy Hollywood version of the story between Achilles and Bresies through Wolfgang Petersens Troy. And as far as I can remember, in the Iliad Achilles is seriously annoyed with Agamemnon for snatching away his woman, but we never get to know anything about the relationship between Achilles and Breseis. I wonder what route Pat Barker is taking with her character.
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