Contrast between the shield of Achilles and the modern shield

The classical myth of Achilles is employed by Auden to exemplify the contrast between the valiant past and cowardice present. The myth of the past is juxtaposed with the reality of the present. The poem thematically depicts a world devoid of principles and ethics, that in its march for success has lost the true meaning as echoed in phrases like “an unintelligible multitude”,  “column by column in a cloud of dust”. The Homeric myth is rendered into an allegory of the contemporary times. It is Auden’s disgust at the totalitarian regime of the modern world where the individual is relegated. The Achilles a world serves as his mouthpiece to comment on the stagnation of the Modern world.

The shield reflects the hollowness and futility of a life that verges on nothingness. The sky like ‘lead’ echoes the metallic, frigid and cold human behavior.

The modern life is one that is based on logic and reasoning. It is characterized by a lack of sentiment.

Thetis searched the shield for scenes of Greek life as depicted on Keats’ Grecian Urn. The phrase ‘white flower garlanded heifer” echoes the same. The term ‘ritual pities’ reflects the same. The ‘libation’ refers to the pouring forth of wine in honor of a God. In their flickering forge-light, she observes yet another scene. The scene is of a concentration camp where prisoners of war are kept. Officers cracked jokes to while away the time. The enemy soldiers amidst of such callousness are captured and tied to three stakes and killed. The irreverence of the picture is a reminder of the crucifixion of Christ filled with overwhelming reverence. The modern society with the loss of religious conviction is juxtaposed against an act that is emblematic of the redemption of mankind.

She looks for athletes at their games, and men and women in dance rhythmically swaying their limbs to the beat of the music. But in the reflective shield that he held there were no such ‘healthy’ images, but only those of decay and decomposition-“a weed-choked field”.

What one is finally left with is aimless; impulsive peoples out of hurt each other for no reason at all. Just like the ‘ragged urchin’ mentioned. People regress into primitivism and develop an animal instinct. Unwarranted violence, rape, broken promises and lack of humanity was the order of the contemporary times.

Hephaestus is the god of fire and metal-smith who made the shield of Achilles. Thetis, the mother of Achilles cries out in despair at the thought of the inevitability of her son’s death.“The strong/ Iron-hearted man” referred to in the poem is Paris destined to play Achilles. War, a metaphor of life, where people are caught in the race of survival of the fittest, spares no one and one eventually succumbs to the same.

The questions you may answer reading this very article:

*) Contrast between The Shield of Achilles and the shield of modern

*) shield of Achilles vs The shield of modern 

*) what are the differences between the past and the present as described in The Shield of Achilles by D H Auden

*)What are the Differences between the shield of Achilles and the modern shield

Bibliography:  https://goo.gl/FdFYQo