Auden's The Shield of Achilles

[Darcy88]

Is this poem an indictment of Achilles and the Homeric warrior ideal? Its one of my favourite poems and that is how I have always interpreted it. The last two lines in particular - "the strong iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles who would not live long" - as well as the entire second to last stanza seem to express to me Auden's disapproval of Achilles' choice to go for glory over peace. Homer in a sense glorifies war and it is hard not to see it as something noble within the context of the Iliad. In this poem Auden takes perhaps the most beautiful instrument of war ever conceived and paints over it a bleak and horrid picture of what the reality of war is really like.

The thing is that I just read a few other persons' interpretations of the poem and they instead think it to be a condemnation of modern warfare, contrasted with the nobility of ancient war, and not of war itself. I don't see that. I see Auden portraying negatively the Homeric ideal of the greatness of imposing one's power over others, exemplified by Achilles thousands of years ago and still followed by the totalitarian conquerers of the 20th century. Any thoughts?




The Shield of Achilles
W. H. Auden

She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities
And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
His hands had put instead
An artificial wilderness
And a sky like lead.

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.

Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

She looked over his shoulder
For ritual pieties,
White flower-garlanded heifers,
Libation and sacrifice,
But there on the shining metal
Where the altar should have been,
She saw by his flickering forge-light
Quite another scene.

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
A crowd of ordinary decent folk
Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.

The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.

She looked over his shoulder
For athletes at their games,
Men and women in a dance
Moving their sweet limbs
Quick, quick, to music,
But there on the shining shield
His hands had set no dancing-floor
But a weed-choked field.

A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.

The thin-lipped armorer,
Hephaestos, hobbled away,
Thetis of the shining breasts
Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
To please her son, the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
Who would not live long.

[OrphanPip]

Your reading is not an uncommon one for this poem. A lot of people read Thetis as an embodiment of ancient values, but I think it also possible to read her as representing the desires of Auden or the modern individual in general. She is looking for meaning and hope in the shield, but she finds that Hephaestos gives her nothing but images of violence and alienation. I actually think it is a mistake to think that Auden wants to celebrate heroic military idealism, I agree more with you that the rewriting of Homer serves not simply to represent how we have changed from Homer but is also a reaction against the ongoing idealization of war.

"The Unknown Citizen" makes for a good Auden companion piece to this. He does something similar with the conflation of military themes with a general discussion of societal values and his dissatisfaction with modern values.

(To JS/07 M 378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

[Hawkman]

Certainly the poem comes across as anti-war but I feel there is more going on here than just saying war is bad, brutal, dehumanising and cruel. It should be remembered that Achilles did not fight for a cause; he remained the consummate personification of individuality, fighting for personal renown and glory. It is also interesting that the poem focusses on the shield, for the shield is designed to protect, although it can be used offensively. The images which Thetis expects to be depicted on the shield are those of a society at peace, thus, in her vision, it might be considered honourable for an individual to fight to protect those values.

At the same time though, Thetis knows that this shield was made for a specific combat, which, ultimately in the course of the Trojan War, (being fought by Agamemnon over an ostensibly trivial reason) will lead to her son’s death. She knows it and so does Achilles, but Achilles knows his name will live forever. His individual deeds will be as immortal as his name. This is the classical Homeric virtue of war, but Auden contrasts this with a modern vision, largely influenced by images of WW1, although personally he saw the Spanish Civil War and The Cino-Japanese conflicts first hand.

The vision is of wholesale destruction and mindless helots obeying spurious dogma, robbed of their individuality and humanity. Note too, the difference between the sacrifices. The classical image of a fine bull to appease a god, an act of celebration and feasting, and then compare it to the image of three men being cold-bloodedly executed in a fashion which brands them as cowards by bored officials who joke about it, victims of an inhuman state which does not tolerate dissent or even weakness.

Hephaestus has forged a vision of a future without hope where individuals count for nothing except “statistics,” mere numbers recorded on a balance sheet. It is a vision of the kind of dystopian totalitarianism of Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm.

Orphan Pip’s citing of “(To JS/07 M 378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)” echoes this abhorrence of monumental state bureaucracy, which is only satisfied with conformity and obedience.

So yes, the poem is anti-war, especially modern war, but does it also question the Homeric Hero myth? Ultimately I think one has to admit that it does, as Hephaestus’ images of war are not heroic in this poem. It suggests that those classical ideals are as corrupt as the reasons for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men at Passchendaele and The Somme. However, it is also protesting the subsumption of the individual by the body of the state.

[cafolini]

That's a good story, Darcy, as long as we remember that Homer had no obligation for being paid or pretending like dumbass Alexander Pope. LOL

[Darcy88]

Your reading is not an uncommon one for this poem. A lot of people read Thetis as an embodiment of ancient values, but I think it also possible to read her as representing the desires of Auden or the modern individual in general. She is looking for meaning and hope in the shield, but she finds that Hephaestos gives her nothing but images of violence and alienation. I actually think it is a mistake to think that Auden wants to celebrate heroic military idealism, I agree more with you that the rewriting of Homer serves not simply to represent how we have changed from Homer but is also a reaction against the ongoing idealization of war.

"The Unknown Citizen" makes for a good Auden companion piece to this. He does something similar with the conflation of military themes with a general discussion of societal values and his dissatisfaction with modern values.

(To JS/07 M 378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

Thanks Pip. Its good to know my interpretation is shared by others. I have read that poem you shared before. Its one of the ultimate non-comformity poems. Another of his that I really enjoy is September 1, 1939.


Certainly the poem comes across as anti-war but I feel there is more going on here than just saying war is bad, brutal, dehumanising and cruel. It should be remembered that Achilles did not fight for a cause; he remained the consummate personification of individuality, fighting for personal renown and glory. It is also interesting that the poem focusses on the shield, for the shield is designed to protect, although it can be used offensively. The images which Thetis expects to be depicted on the shield are those of a society at peace, thus, in her vision, it might be considered honourable for an individual to fight to protect those values.

At the same time though, Thetis knows that this shield was made for a specific combat, which, ultimately in the course of the Trojan War, (being fought by Agamemnon over an ostensibly trivial reason) will lead to her son’s death. She knows it and so does Achilles, but Achilles knows his name will live forever. His individual deeds will be as immortal as his name. This is the classical Homeric virtue of war, but Auden contrasts this with a modern vision, largely influenced by images of WW1, although personally he saw the Spanish Civil War and The Cino-Japanese conflicts first hand.

The vision is of wholesale destruction and mindless helots obeying spurious dogma, robbed of their individuality and humanity. Note too, the difference between the sacrifices. The classical image of a fine bull to appease a god, an act of celebration and feasting, and then compare it to the image of three men being cold-bloodedly executed in a fashion which brands them as cowards by bored officials who joke about it, victims of an inhuman state which does not tolerate dissent or even weakness.

Hephaestus has forged a vision of a future without hope where individuals count for nothing except “statistics,” mere numbers recorded on a balance sheet. It is a vision of the kind of dystopian totalitarianism of Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm.

Orphan Pip’s citing of “(To JS/07 M 378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)” echoes this abhorrence of monumental state bureaucracy, which is only satisfied with conformity and obedience.

So yes, the poem is anti-war, especially modern war, but does it also question the Homeric Hero myth? Ultimately I think one has to admit that it does, as Hephaestus’ images of war are not heroic in this poem. It suggests that those classical ideals are as corrupt as the reasons for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men at Passchendaele and The Somme. However, it is also protesting the subsumption of the individual by the body of the state.

Great response Hawkman! I think Auden is trying to show parallels between Homer's glorification of war and modern militarism/totalitarianism. I also wonder whether he is not using Achilles for a representative of all of humanity and saying that if we don't abandon our collective madness for power and glory then we will "not live long." It was published after both world wars, after so many million had been butchered in vain.

[Nick Capozzoli]

The thing is that I just read a few other persons' interpretations of the poem and they instead think it to be a condemnation of modern warfare, contrasted with the nobility of ancient war, and not of war itself. I don't see that. I see Auden portraying negatively the Homeric ideal of the greatness of imposing one's power over others, exemplified by Achilles thousands of years ago and still followed by the totalitarian conquerers of the 20th century. Any thoughts?

It's certainly a condemnation of modern warfare, and the gray inhospitable images (barbed-wire enclosures, a million boots inline) evoke the coldly efficient barbarity of the Nazis. This is contrasted with the Hellenic ideals of warfare and the bright bucolic classical imagery (which was, according to Homer, on Achilles' shield). It's unclear from the poem that Auden was condemning Achilles or the Homeric view of war and warriors. It is, however, pretty clear that he viewed modern warfare as very different and much worse than the Homeric version...

It's possible to take the lines about
...... the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
Who would not live long
as elegiac rather than condemnatory.

It seems pretty clear that no such elegiac tone is due Hitler or the other bearers of Achilles's modern leaden shield.

It may be that Auden was saying that the Homeric warrior ideals cannot exist in the modern world, that even Achilles could
not exist as a hero here.

General Sherman said that "War is Hell," and he proved during his destructive march through Georgia.