Critical Review on the Iliad :: essays research papers

Natures ForceSimone Weil, a french writer, explores the depth and motive of why and how we do the things we do. In this critical review, Weil elucidates the trust of force in the Iliad. It is exception tout ensembley difficult to put into words the sum that Weil gives force. When she defines it, she states, it is that x that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing (331). When I first read this, I did not comprehend what she meant by it. As Weil refers to force, she uses in the context of fight and the taking of lives in the Iliad. This force takes away all natural abilities. Weil explains how all living things respond to stimuli. The muscles in our body run through reactions to things that take place in our environment. The force that she is trying to define is one that takes away this exponent to respond. In war, a soldier must look past the painful unity that he is causing in taking another hu valet universes life. Weil suggests that this is as if life is being removed from the body of this soldier, resulting in a breathing corpse. Remorse becomes an overlooked emotion and all sensation vanishes. Does this not constitute a corpse, when all ability to respond to what is spillage on around him has departed therefore taking away the rattling factor that defines a living object?When examining force by fashion of killing others, this force does not only have an effect on the victim, but also on the conqueror. Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates (332). Weil goes on to plead that force is not really a retainable thing. All persons, weak and strong, have to at one point in their life relinquish overtop to force. No one is exempt. She points to Achilles as an example. When he is killing Hector, he is retentiveness the force against Hector to take his life. On the other hand, when Agamemnon purposely degrades Achilles by taking his war pri ze, Achilles goes to be alone and weep in his humiliation. A force knocks him down as he knocked his opponent Hector down. To video display the cycle, we find Agamemnon weeping just a few days afterward as a result of a force.