The Song of Achilles
Madeline Miller (2011)
“Homer's Iliad retold through the eyes of the boy who loved Achilles — and paid everything for it.”
Character Analysis
The novel's central formal choice: the boy who exists in Homer as the death that causes the Iliad's crisis, given interiority and voice. Patroclus defines himself by what he is not — not swift, not beautiful, not destined. But Miller demonstrates that what he is — patient, ethical, loving, genuinely good — is rarer and more valuable than any of the qualities he lacks. His self-deprecation is not false modesty but genuine surprise that he matters. The entire novel is structured to vindicate that surprise.
Plain, self-deprecating, precise about others, vague about himself. Uses similes to describe Achilles that he would never apply to himself.