Laurie Glenn Hutcheson (Boston University)
This paper demonstrates how Achilles code switches in his conversation with his mother Thetis, toggling between divine and human worlds. I examine two speeches of Achilles: his cry to Thetis from the shore (1.352-356) and his longer speech to her after she comes (1.365-412). On the surface these two utterances seem to accomplish similar things: asking for his mother’s help, complaining about how he has been mistreated by Agamemnon, and seeking Zeus’s intervention. Yet these speeches differ more than has been recognized, revealing an important gap between the two worlds Achilles is navigating.
Achilles has two distinct ways of articulating his complaint, his reason for deserving honor, and his request. In his first speech he orients his trouble around his mother’s perspective, emphasizing his short life and his lack of honor; in his second he responds to her invitation to reveal himself to her, emphasizing his desire for justice and recognition in the human community.
When he orients his language around Thetis, Achilles for the first time makes a claim on Zeus because of her, his mother (1.352-4). Achilles touches on the themes that most resonate with Thetis’s own discourse: his short life, his relationship to her, and Zeus as the source of his honor. Laura Slatkin’s work (1991) has illuminated why Zeus owes honor to Thetis’s short-lived son; Achilles articulates this dynamic here to a receptive audience. Thetis echoes his language both in her response and in her supplication of Zeus.
In this second speech, Achilles speaks in language that recalls the community of mortals. Whereas in his first speech he states that Zeus has not honored him at all (νῦν δ᾽οὐδέ με τυτθὸν ἔτισεν, 1.352), now he states that Agamemnon has not done so (οὐδὲν ἔτισεν, 1.412). His narrative provides insight into his perspective (Robbins 1990, Rabel 1997, de Jong 1985). What has been overlooked is the way it contrasts with his earlier cry to Thetis by emphasizing the context of community. Rather than simply requesting honor (τιμή), Achilles seeks recognition. He asks Zeus to make the Greeks suffer so that Agamemnon will recognize his harm (ἣν ἄτην, 1.410-412). Thetis articulates her priorities for Achilles in different terms when she supplicates Zeus, with a tight cluster of τιμάω/τιμή/τίω and emphasis on her son’s short life (1.505-510); she describes the desired outcome as honor from the Achaians. Her narrow way of representing her son’s request suppresses the full context of the community and Agamemnon’s hubris.
There is a gap between Achilles’ desire for recognition and justice in his community, and his mother’s negotiation about her son’s short life and honor from Zeus. By briefly articulating this cluster of themes—the brevity of his life and his deserving honor from Zeus because of Thetis—Achilles shows himself adept at switching between a human and a divine framework. In the juxtaposition of these two frameworks, and the way Thetis responds to and transmits one aspect of Achilles’ speech and not others, we see the human narrative spinning out of Achilles’ control.