{"id":7613,"date":"2003-09-05T14:43:12","date_gmt":"2003-09-05T14:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=55"},"modified":"2017-09-06T23:56:14","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T17:56:14","slug":"the-shield-of-achilles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2003\/09\/the-shield-of-achilles\/","title":{"rendered":"The Shield of Achilles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

<\/p>

For several years, I have been assigning W. H. Auden\u2019s poem \u201cThe Shield of Achilles\u201d to my literature students, and they all have to write a paper on it. The poem is very rich, and I continue to learn new things. One student this year, for example, pointed out that the reader is supposed to share Thetis\u2019s grief at the end of the poem, when she realizes what Haephestos has made for her son, Achilles. This made me wonder if the reader is also supposed to share Thetis\u2019s expectations, expressed throughout the poem, about the contents of the shield. If so, the poem is about the reader\u2019s or the modern world\u2019s loss of innocence. Before WWI, Europeans looked at the war as an opportunity for heroics on the scale of the ancient heroes, but the results were far different \u2014 \u201cweed-choked fields\u201d and a \u201cblankness\u201d on which stand \u201ca million eyes, a million boots in line, without expression, waiting for a sign.\u201d <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the poem: <\/p>\n

The Shield of Achilles <\/a>
W. H. Auden <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For several years, I have been assigning W. H. Auden\u2019s poem \u201cThe Shield of Achilles\u201d to my literature students, and they all have to write a paper on it. The poem is very rich, and I continue to learn new things. One student this year, for example, pointed out that the reader is supposed to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Shield of Achilles<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"For several years, I have been assigning W. H. 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