Analysing Literary Form, Plot and Characterisation

Reading warfare as literature

A literary account of war does more than report who fought whom. Writers select events, give characters particular words and arrange scenes to make violence seem magnificent, frightening, pitiful or morally troubling. To analyse a passage, connect what happens with how it is presented and what that presentation suggests.

The prescribed texts offer different kinds of writing. Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid are epic poems: extended narratives of heroic action involving both humans and gods. Tyrtaeus’ ‘fallen warrior’ poem is martial exhortation in the elegiac tradition, urging soldiers to stand firm. Horace’s Odes 3.2 is a lyric ode which moves from military training to reflections on virtue and religious loyalty. These shorter poems do not have a continuous battle plot like the epics.

Homer: following the action across four books

The Iliad concerns the war between the Greeks and Trojans at Troy. In the prescribed extracts, changes of location and pace allow us to see warriors as fighters, family members and grieving human beings.

In Book 5, lines 84–469, Diomedes dominates the battlefield. Pandarus wounds him with an arrow, but Athena strengthens him and permits him to attack Aphrodite, while warning him against attacking other gods. Aeneas and Pandarus then confront him together. Diomedes kills Pandarus and severely wounds Aeneas. Aphrodite rescues her son, but Diomedes wounds her wrist; Apollo takes over Aeneas’ protection. When Diomedes continues his attack, Apollo warns him not to consider himself equal to the gods, and he gives ground. The action therefore develops from human combat into a test of the boundary between mortal and divine power.

In Book 6, lines 118–529, the pace changes. Diomedes and Glaucus discover that their grandfathers were guest-friends. Instead of fighting each other, they exchange armour and agree to avoid one another in battle. Hector returns to Troy, arranges prayers through his mother Hecabe, rebukes Paris and meets Andromache and their young son. Finally, Hector and Paris return to the fighting. The movement from battlefield to city reveals what the warriors’ decisions mean for those inside the walls.

In Book 22, lines 21–409, Hector remains outside Troy despite his parents’ pleas. He fears disgrace because he rejected Polydamas’ advice to withdraw the army. Yet when Achilles approaches, Hector runs, and Achilles pursues him three times around the city. Athena, disguised as Hector’s brother Deiphobus, persuades him to stand and fight. Hector discovers the deception only when he needs another spear. Achilles kills him, refuses his appeal for the return of his body and drags the corpse behind his chariot.

In Book 24, lines 468–620, Priam enters Achilles’ hut to ransom Hector’s body. His appeal makes Achilles remember his own father, Peleus. The two men weep, and Achilles returns Hector’s washed and clothed body. This reverses his refusal in Book 22, although his warning to Priam shows that his anger has not simply disappeared.

Characterisation: greatness need not mean goodness

Diomedes’ courage is presented through action and speech. He rejects Sthenelus’ suggestion of retreat and faces two opponents on foot. However, Athena strengthens him and guides the spear that kills Pandarus. His success is therefore not entirely independent. His pursuit of Apollo’s protected Aeneas also shows how confidence can become dangerous overreaching.

Homer’s comparisons make this force vivid. Diomedes resembles a winter torrent that breaks embankments and destroys cultivated land. The image presents him as unstoppable, but also as destructive of things people have patiently built. After being wounded, he becomes like an enraged lion attacking a flock. The simile explains why Pandarus’ apparent success actually makes the danger worse.

Hector is characterised through competing responsibilities. He condemns Paris for staying away while others die, refuses Helen’s invitation to sit down and feels compelled to defend Troy. Yet he smiles at his son and removes the helmet that frightens the child. This small action reveals tenderness beneath the warrior’s appearance.

His conversation with Andromache is not simply a contrast between courage and cowardice. She proposes defending a vulnerable section of the wall near the fig-tree. Hector understands her fear, but believes that avoiding the fighting would bring shame. His choice emerges from duty, reputation and love, not a lack of concern for his family.

Achilles also changes across the extracts. In Book 22, he rejects Hector’s proposed agreement about their bodies and threatens him with desecration. In Book 24, he recognises Priam’s grief and handles Hector’s body with care. Nevertheless, he fears that Priam’s distress could provoke another violent outburst. His compassion is real, but fragile.

Setting, speeches and the reader’s knowledge

A setting can carry meaning as well as locate an event. During the pursuit of Hector, Homer describes the washing troughs once used by Trojan women in peacetime. An ordinary place of domestic work becomes the scene of a race for life. The contrast makes the loss of peace concrete.

The Scaean Gate marks the boundary between the family and city Hector protects and the fighting outside. Achilles prevents him from reaching shelter, turning that boundary into a source of suspense. By contrast, Achilles’ hut in Book 24 permits a face-to-face meeting and shared lamentation rather than public combat.

Speeches reveal motives that action alone cannot show. Hector’s private debate before the duel exposes regret, shame and his brief consideration of negotiation. Readers can therefore understand why he stays outside even though the decision is disastrous.

Divine intervention creates dramatic irony. We know that ‘Deiphobus’ is Athena, while Hector believes his brother has come to help. His gratitude makes the deception especially painful. Similarly, the narrator tells us that Athena rejects the Trojan women’s prayer in Book 6: their sincere hopes do not control the outcome.

Virgil: a survivor narrates Troy’s destruction

In Aeneid Book 2, lines 268–804, Aeneas recounts the fall of Troy in the first person. Unlike the Iliad extracts, which show fighting before Troy falls, this passage takes us through the destruction of the city itself.

The sequence gives Aeneas’ actions a changing direction. Hector appears in a dream, telling him to escape with Troy’s sacred objects and household gods. Aeneas nevertheless joins desperate resistance. His companions adopt Greek armour, which initially helps them deceive the enemy. When they try to rescue Cassandra, however, Trojans mistake them for Greeks, while Greeks recognise their different speech. Their apparent advantage becomes a cause of disaster.

At Priam’s palace, Aeneas witnesses Pyrrhus killing Polites before his parents and then killing Priam at the altar. The sight of the old king makes Aeneas think of his own father and family. He then turns towards revenge against Helen, but Venus stops him, reveals the gods destroying Troy and directs him to protect his household.

Anchises initially refuses to leave. The harmless flame on Iulus’ head, followed by thunder and a fiery star, persuades him to accept escape. Aeneas carries his father, leads his son and entrusts the sacred objects to Anchises because his own hands are polluted by fighting. Creusa disappears during their flight. Aeneas returns to search for her, but her ghost tells him to continue towards his future elsewhere. By dawn he leads a growing band of refugees into the hills.

Form and character in Aeneas’ account

First-person narration makes the destruction personal. Aeneas describes his anger, confusion and fear, but also insists that he did not avoid the risks of battle. His account presents both the suffering he witnessed and his own conduct as a survivor. Readers should distinguish what he saw from how he interprets it.

His character develops from a desire to die fighting towards responsibility for others. This is not a simple change from bravery to fear. Once he carries Anchises and leads Iulus, every noise alarms him because their lives depend on him. His fear reveals the weight of his new task.

Virgil also connects places with lost relationships. A passage into Priam’s palace had once been used by Andromache to bring Astyanax to his grandfather. During the attack, that domestic route becomes a way into a battle. Familiar spaces now expose the destruction of family life.

The link with Homer is particularly sharp when Priam reminds Pyrrhus that Achilles respected his appeal and returned Hector’s body. Pyrrhus’ cruelty is judged against his father’s eventual mercy. The comparison complicates any assumption that heroic strength guarantees honourable behaviour.

Tyrtaeus and Horace: poetry that urges and judges

Tyrtaeus builds his poem through contrasts rather than a continuous story. He first contrasts noble death defending the homeland with the poverty and dishonour of wandering in exile with one’s family. He then addresses young men directly, urging them to stand together and not abandon older fighters. Finally, he contrasts the shocking exposure of an older man’s fallen body with the beauty attributed to a young warrior’s death.

This arrangement supports persuasion. Commands turn the argument into action, while vivid descriptions make flight emotionally repellent. The final image of a soldier with feet planted firmly and teeth biting his lip translates steadfastness into a physical posture. The poet is encouraging a particular response, not neutrally describing every soldier’s experience.

Horace’s ode begins by wishing that a boy should become hardened through military service and threaten the Parthians as a horseman. An imagined enemy wife and daughter fear the warrior, who is compared to a dangerous lion. Their perspective magnifies his power without narrating an actual victory.

The declaration that it is ‘sweet and fitting’ to die for one’s country is followed by the warning that death pursues fleeing soldiers too. The poem then broadens its argument: virtue is independent of political defeat and popular opinion, and loyal religious silence deserves reward. Its closing picture of Punishment pursuing the wicked connects conduct with consequences beyond the battlefield.

Connecting form with purpose

Epic narrative allows character to unfold through changing events: Achilles’ behaviour towards Hector’s corpse can be compared across Books 22 and 24, while Aeneas’ priorities change during Troy’s destruction. Extended similes, speeches and shifts of setting shape our responses to those changes.

The shorter poems work more directly through address, commands, imagined scenes and contrasts. Tyrtaeus urges collective steadfastness; Horace connects military courage with a wider account of virtue. In each case, a convincing interpretation links the poem’s particular form to what it encourages readers to admire, fear or question.