Patroklos and Hektor are victims of war and internal, delusional passion. Their deaths are intertwined, as they are both the causualties of Achilles lack of spirit or internal death. The deaths of these two men help to illistrate Homers outlook on war. These two men are like James Bond, fighting a cold war that is not their own. Like any good patriot in the days of the Iron Curtain they dehumanize the enemy. Like children they become enraged at thoughts of the "enemy" though neither side knows exactly why they are fighting. These two men have the most spirit of anyone in the war.
Homer tries to establish both of these fighters as individual men by showing their loyalties, their loves and depicting their downfalls with brutal
honesty. Hektor is a man of family. He loves his father, Priam. He fights the war to defend his vain and cowardly brother, Paris, and his country. His deepest love is his wife, Andromakhe and their young son. He sorrowfully says farewell to her and his child, "...do not be too distressed by thoughts of me. You know no man dispatches me into the undergloom against my fate, coward or brave man, ..."(Bk.6 lines 566-7 pg. 157) His honor and destiny pull him away from his wife but he shows regret for having to leave her and orphan their son. Patroklos, too is a man of loyalty and honor. He is unreasonably loyal to Akhilleus and stands by him, despite Akhilleus defecting from the Akhaian army. Patroklos is brought to tears in book fifteen when he walks through the Greek camps
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