How The Song of Achilles represented queer youth
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (The Puma Prensa / Alana Moscoso-Mendoza)
By Alana Moscoso-Mendoza, Opinion Editor
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller was nothing short of a revolutionary novel for 14-year-old me. Yes, I’m sure the fact that I rarely picked up a book (and even rarer than that, stuck with it) was a factor in what made it so striking. But above all, queer love illustrated as something sacred was truly foreign to me, and that was exactly what The Song of Achilles portrayed.
The novel, published September 3, 2011, is a retelling of The Iliad. The Iliad, an epic poem by the ancient Greek poet Homer, details a few weeks in the final year of the Trojan War and focuses on Achilles, the fated “greatest of the Greeks.” The Song of Achilles, however, establishes Patroclus as its protagonist, Achilles’s closest comrade. Miller’s novel highlights the humanity of the tale, focusing on their relationship throughout the novel.
I could list off countless instances in which straight relationships were celebrated and cherished. But Achilles and Patroclus? I had never seen anything like it. I had never seen a fictional queer couple portrayed in such a raw fashion, never woven into history, into a place where they and I were notoriously unwelcome. I had never seen it in Greek mythology: ancient tales of beauty and the vileness of gods. Never in beauty: in bare mountaintops, in towering palaces, through mystical forests. Never in brutality: raw anger, in the war that decimated love towards the end of the novel, in blood and death.
Queerness has existed within media only with quietness or a lifeless presence; in neither extreme of passion are we represented, only on the middle of a spectrum where either side preaches intensity. We are shown what the “right amount” of queerness looks like. To my younger self, The Song of Achilles brought passion and life back to being queer. It showed myself, and countless other readers, that we are allowed to exist when it is beautiful, boring, disgusting, or anywhere in between. We do not have to be palatable to have a standing.
That is not to discredit all of the queer characters within various media that are rather dull and, in turn, palatable to a wider audience—these characters have definitely created stepping stones in simply being able to be LGBTQ+ without it being “too controversial” for entertainment. Although an overused descriptor, queer individuals are often described as being “unapologetically queer.” This implies that there is a reason to apologize for loving freely. There is no sensible reason, not one forged in truth or facts. The only truth, which is pledged and spread throughout The Song of Achilles, is that being queer is as natural as breathing. And for youth, individuals who are especially susceptible to an unwavering need to apologize for every thought and action, it is nothing short of freeing to see themselves in a story so beautiful. An aspect of oneself that is often met with shame can feel out of place in sanctity.
The Song of Achilles has its flaws, especially for readers who are familiar with Greek mythology. I can’t disagree that Patroclus’s characterization makes him unnecessarily meager, and Achilles’s characterization makes him slightly bland. However, the point still stands that their relationship as a whole speaks volumes, especially for queer youth. It gave—and still gives—a voice to those oftentimes silenced, and it illustrates a life where one can love freely and passionately without restraint. The novel was published in 2011, and in the U.S., gay marriage was only legalized in 2015. At the time of publication, it was not legal to declare a lifelong commitment to a member of the same gender. One could even argue it was not legal to love a member of the same gender. Legally, many queer individuals knew restraint intimately, and they knew it socially, too. Even today, loving freely is not yet socially acceptable in many instances, or at least met with judgement. While this is true for the whole of the U.S., judgment is typically less common in the north, known for possessing more liberal views, and more common in the south, where they generally maintain more traditional ideologies.
Today, it is no longer illegal to marry the same gender – although, the legal right to same sex marriage is being threatened by many state lawmakers. There have been numerous calls to revisit Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court decision that deemed state bans on same sex marriage unconstitutional. If this decision were to be overturned, states could reinstate bans on gay marriage and effectively erase what the queer community had spent decades fighting for. It can seem like advocates of queer rights take one step forward, only to take two steps back in a concerningly short amount of time; stories like The Song of Achilles inspire an innumerable number of individuals, only for the same amount of people to oppose all that the novel stood for, and they do it proudly. While this is not an uncommon thought, it is vital that, even in despairing times, we hold onto hope and continue forward. Yes, the right to same sex marriage is being threatened, but it is not gone. One of the core messages within The Song of Achilles is that love is steadfast, enduring, and always worth fighting for, which is a message that we must carry close with us.
It has now been 14 years since the publication of The Song of Achilles, meaning the novel is now as old as a high school student. While 14 years is not a very long time whatsoever, it is a considerable amount, and the fact that the novel is still on the minds of many (I know it’s certainly on mine) after over a decade shows the distance by which The Song of Achilles reached its readers. It is past its height of popularity, sure, but any trend is fickle by nature. The lessons we learn through stories, and the reactions we have to these stories' content, are what truly does not die.
What myself, and an innumerable amount of others, learned from The Song of Achilles is that queerness has a place in beauty and in plainness. Whether queer love is full of raging emotion or mind-numbingly dull, it is love regardless, and it is free of shame or apology.