The Song of Achilles

Miller chooses Patroclus, not Achilles, as the narrator of a story in which Achilles is the mythological protagonist. What do we gain and lose by seeing Achilles only through Patroclus's eyes? How would the novel be different if Achilles narrated?

Chiron asks 'Name one hero who was happy.' Is the novel's answer that heroism and happiness are inherently incompatible? Or is it more specific — that Achilles's particular heroism is incompatible with happiness?

Thetis carved both names on the tomb — eventually. What does this act cost her, and why does Miller make this the novel's final resolution? What does it mean that divine acknowledgment is required for Patroclus to be at rest?

The novel presents Achilles as both genuinely good and genuinely terrible — sometimes simultaneously. Is this a contradiction, or is it Miller's point? What makes someone capable of being both?

Patroclus violates his agreement with Achilles — he pushes past the stopping point. Was this a failure of character, a failure of judgment, or an inevitability? Does the novel judge him for it?

Miller renders Hector with genuine sympathy — he is brave, loving, and a competent general. How does this complicate the novel's ethics? Can a war have heroes on both sides without both sides being right?

Compare Thetis to a figure like Peleus. Both love Achilles. How are their loves different in quality and effect? What does Miller suggest about the difference between human and divine love?

The Song of Achilles is sometimes categorized as a 'gay love story' and sometimes as a mythological retelling. Does categorization affect how readers approach it? Does the category matter?

Miller gives Patroclus the role of healer at Troy — a role not explicitly his in Homer. Why this choice? How does the healer's perspective on war differ from the warrior's, and how does this dual perspective shape the novel?

The Priam-Achilles meeting is often called Homer's greatest scene. How does Miller render it, and what is she adding that Homer doesn't — or can't — show?

Kleos — heroic fame that outlasts death — is Achilles's explicit motivation for going to Troy. But Patroclus never seeks kleos. Is the novel suggesting that kleos is overrated, or simply that different people want different things?

The Pelion section is deliberately written in a lyrical, luminous register. Why does Miller make this stylistic choice, and what effect does it create when we remember it from later in the novel?

Briseis is the object of the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon. How does Miller handle her — and does making her a sympathetic character change what the quarrel means?

Achilles's choice — long obscure life or short glorious one — is presented as the central decision of the mythology. Does Miller suggest the choice was real, or was Achilles always going to choose glory? Was there ever genuine freedom in his fate?

Miller narrates the final chapters through Patroclus's dead perspective — he observes events from beyond his own death. How does this work narratively? Does it strain credibility, or does the emotional logic sustain it?

The novel has been criticized for idealizating its protagonists. Is Patroclus too good? Is Achilles too beautiful and brilliant? Or is idealization appropriate to its mythological source material?

Odysseus in this novel is pragmatic and useful but not warm. How does Miller's Odysseus compare to his characterization in the Odyssey or in Sophocles? What does she add or subtract?

The novel was written in 2011 and became a bestseller on TikTok in 2021-22. What does it mean that a literary novel about ancient Greece found its largest audience through short video sharing? Does the medium change anything about how the book is read?

If you had to argue that Thetis is the novel's tragic figure rather than Patroclus or Achilles, how would you make the case? What does she lose, and is she responsible for what she loses?

Compare the novel's treatment of glory (kleos) to the treatment of the American Dream in The Great Gatsby. Both are presented as organizing principles that structure characters' lives and destroy them. What are the differences in how each novel views its organizing illusion?

The novel never specifies what Patroclus believes about death and the afterlife while he is alive — only when he is dead. How does this narrative withholding affect the experience of reading the final chapters?

Miller chooses to end the novel on a single word: 'Achilles.' Why this choice over any possible sentence? What does the single word accomplish that a fuller ending could not?

The novel depicts a culture in which male companionship could be central and publicly acknowledged in ways contemporary Western culture often makes harder. Does the ancient Greek setting function as idealization, or as historical specificity?

Patroclus describes himself as not good at anything heroic. But healing, music appreciation, emotional intelligence, and ethical clarity are all things he is good at. What does the novel suggest about how the heroic tradition has defined 'good'?

How is love depicted differently in this novel compared to another text you have read? Consider what love requires, what it costs, and what it cannot provide, in each text.

The novel's epigraph (if the edition you read includes it) and its title both direct attention to Achilles. But the narrator is Patroclus. What is the effect of a title that names the person being loved rather than the person doing the loving?

Miller spent a decade writing this novel while teaching high school classics. How might the experience of explaining Greek culture to students who have never encountered it shape a novelist's approach to mythological retelling?

The war in this novel lasts ten years. How does Miller handle duration — the grinding passage of time — in a form (the novel) that typically compresses time much more than epic does?

Fate in this novel is real — Achilles will die young, and there is nothing anyone can do. Does knowing the fated outcome make the choices the characters make more or less meaningful? Does fate eliminate agency?

If a student argued that The Song of Achilles sentimentalizes the Trojan War by focusing on romantic love between two men rather than on the political and military realities Homer captures, how would you respond? Is this a fair criticism?