This idea seems to come out of our discussion of Dune, which we also finished this week. While Paul Maud’Dib brings about multiple disruptions, the real one is yet to come. Dune ends with a sense of foreboding about the eminent jihad that Maud’Dib is powerless to stop. In human terms, war is often the ultimate social disruption. Even with its uneasy ending, there’s also a sense of an order established — that something repressive has ended, or at least changed with the coming of Paul Maud’dib. His endeavors mark a turning point in history, and change will come, for good or ill.

Asimov’s “Nightfall” has at its core something that seems always to be a central concern of his work: the limits of reason and science. Like his story “Reason,” ”Nightfall” shows how empiricism is always limited by location. The astronomers of Lagash know something is coming, but they have no idea what. Because of their location in the galaxy, Lagash is spends all of its time in the light of six suns. However, once every two-thousand and fifty years, all the suns but one set, and the remaining sun is eclipsed for about half a day. During this time, civilization ends and most of the population goes insane. This is the mystery and the conflict in the story. It is the point of disruption for their civilization.

Science, itself, disrupts. “Nightfall” illustrates the contention between science and religion, or fact and belief. The scientists attempt to explain what will happen, logically and empirically. The “Cultists” have their own explanation based on mythological narratives and mysticism. Asimov puts these views in the boxing ring. Both acknowledge the fact of the coming darkness, but both have different explanations about the significance of the fact. The point seems moot, but herein lies the point: facts have no respect for beliefs. The scientists agree with the Cultists; their facts support the coming doom. However, the Cultists belief — their faith — has been brought down to the level of measurable reality. Or, as the chief astronomer Aton 77 puts it,

What ultimately causes the destruction of Lagash’s civilization is up for interpretation, but is seems to have something to do with the sudden realization of insignificance. Ironically, since Lagash is bathed in perpetual light, being an astronomer there is limited. Their perception of the universe is like humanity’s old geocentric one: everything revolves around them. Therefore, they are the most significant entities in the cosmos. Only darkness brings light, in this case, but it’s such an unexpected disruption that reasonable men lose their minds. Curiously, it seems that the Cultist’s predictions are upheld here: in fact, much of the scientists’ knowledge about past cycles comes from the Cultists’ “Book of Revelations,” as Aton 77 admits above. Perhaps, since their belief included “Stars,” their minds are more able to handle the shock.

This is why Asimov is so good: belief is always significant in his vision.

The other selections from di Filippo and Pratt are essentially love stories. They look at what brings people together and the impossible odds that such things ever happen. In “Phylogenesis,” Earth’s ecosystems are destroyed by these mindless, gargantuan, alien entities, and the only way for humanity to survive is to evolve with the help of technology into a viral form that could feed on the creatures and therefore perpetuate the human species. Humans have always been somewhat viral in our approach to environment – as Agent Smith famously explains to Morpheus in The Matrix – and that propensity pushes an allegorical reading of di Filippo’s story. That’s fine, but it’s also about survival, adaptability, and the spirit of life.

Finally, Pratt’s “Impossible Dreams” is really just a good, old-fashioned, geek love story. It’s a celebration of fiction as it is, considers the possibilities of what might come, and wonders at what could have been. Pete’s world order is disrupted by the appearance of a movie store from an alternate reality. Pete knows films, but when he encounters films that never were, he gets angry because “movies mattered.” They mattered so much, his world crumbles when he encounters the impossible. Instead of going insane like the denizens of Lagash, he unexpectedly meets a girl. Out of this disruption comes the possibility of real, human contact. At least that’s the feeling at the end. Pratt’s story just makes us sf geeks feel good. And that’s OK.

Last week, my class and I read Frank Herbert’s Dune, something I haven’t done since high school. I remember being in awe of this novel: it was so big and rich — Herbert painted such a lush and complex picture of an epic future that I became an immediate fan. I was probably thirteen, and I tore through the rest of the novels, feeling sad that there were no more: Herbert died shortly after the publication of Chapterhouse: Dune in 1986. I did this a lot back then. What else was a nerdy little kid to do but to read expansive science fiction and fantasy cycles?

This time through Dune, I was still delighted at its complexity and nuance — particularly in its style, characters’ psychologies, and its examination of political power structures. (Oh, and there are the sf ideas, too.) I remember Herbert’s style as being unique when I read Dune the first time, and I still think so. He is one of the only writers to pull off a truly omniscient narrator. To me, his style is Homeric. Like Homer, Herbert’s most important character in the novel is the one he’s currently focusing on. His style discloses the huge gap between outward confidence and inward doubt. The reader is privy to all the characters’ thoughts, like we were reading Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground, but we see that all characters are the Underground Man. Herbert’s god-like style also speaks to his most poignant concern: human power dynamics and the environments that shape them.

Herbert’s tale, much like the ancient epics, have at their center a demigod. I’ve discussed this sort of science fiction’s relationship to the epic before, so I don’t have to rehash the particulars again. However, the similarities that struck with me this time included the narrative foundations of a social order. The role of the hero — always a quasi-divine figure — in epic poetry is one of scapegoat: they undergo the ordeals so their people don’t have to. This is always a double-edged sword, for any assertion of power means that certain traditions and expectations will be crushed in the process. In order to have progress, something must give way.

For example, in Gilgamesh, in order for civilization to be built and remain secure, and in order for Gilgamesh to have his name “stamped on bricks,” the old order must die. This happens to be the “evil” Humbaba. We see this same narrative repeat itself over and over in epic poetry: Achilles must kill Hector, the champion of the Trojan forces, and by so doing, conquer the Trojan way of life. Odysseus meets and vanquishes all types of “evil” so he can reassert his order in Ithaca. These struggles for power and dominance are the foundation of the epics, and often religion texts. The hero represents a single people’s vision that asserts itself on those it conquers, eliminating the society and their cultural traditions — or at least trying to.

In Dune, this is no exception. Paul Atreides is the culmination of Bene Gesserit eugenics: he is their Kwisatz Haderach, their male super-being. The novel is bracketed by this idea: the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam goes to Caladan at the beginning to test the young Paul, thinking that he might be the one; the end of the novel has the older Paul Maud’Dib vanquishing his enemies and asserting a new order on the universe. Paul’s identity is split: he is both the Fremen revolutionary and the Duke of a Great House. These particulars join in an uneasy marriage in Paul Maud’dib, now the figurehead for the “creatures” he has created. Like Aeneas by the end of Virgil’s epic, Paul has become a messiah, a symbolic leader more powerful than the man ever was — a symbol grand enough to begin a new order, a new jihad.

I’m puzzled, however, about the genesis of the Bene Gesserit super being. One of the most fascinating and nuanced aspects of Dune is the Bene Gesserit order: they are an order of space nuns who educate, indoctrinate, and mythologize. They are the creators of the Missionaria Protectiva – a powerful missionary force that has seeded a particular religious mythology around the universe — allowing Jessica and Paul to more easily assume control within the Fremen culture. Herbert doesn’t dwell on this, but this sinister aspect of the Bene Gesserit shows that they are a sophisticated, manipulative force in the building and maintaining a particular cosmic order.

It’s the nature of this order that’s puzzling: it seems a traditional patriarchal one, put in place to support the male leaders of the great houses. Even the raison d’être of the Bene Gesserit is to create the ultimate male super being. Why? “Kwisatz Haderach” means “the shortening of the way” — the way to more male dominance over women? Yes, the Bene Gesserit are powerful, but they are always subservient. Weird.

So Jessica creates the Kwisatz Haderach in her son, Paul. Perhaps it’s not only nature, but also nurture that turns Paul into the super being. It’s only by staying on Arrakis for a prolonged period that allows Paul to develop his strange powers — powers that become so unpredictable that they even scare Jessica. It’s the spice mixed with Paul’s crafted genetics that allow him to reach his full potential. Perhaps gods are made only when forces converge precisely, when a place and time are right for a change that only a messiah can bring.

This might be the wisdom of the Bene Gesserit: they knew that even they could get complacent, stale, victims of tradition. Perhaps the ultimate goal of the hero is to occasionally destroy one reality so a new one can be built. This is Paul’s unnerving vision throughout the latter half of the novel: he ultimately sees jihad as an inevitable outcome of his victory. Paul’s choice to wear the mantle of the super being precipitates a violent disruption, but reluctantly and with a bittersweet outcome.

Both novels deal with human civilization and progress as a whole. Yes, each novel has central characters, but both writers are more interested in the progress of humanity, rather than individual aspects of it. Their styles are technical and precise; Asimov uses a lot of dialog and exposition to move his stories along, while Clarke likes description. Both novels deal with the death and rebirth of civilizations and the eb and flow of internal and external forces that have shaped and will continue to shape our species. While I could probably continue with a list of general similarities, one of particular interest — at least in the context of my metaphysical science fiction — is that both writers have a guiding, patriarchal figure that takes on a role not unlike a messiah or prophet.

I listened to Foundation for the first part of my journey, from Macon to St. Louis, via Birmingham and Memphis. Asimov’s first novel in what became an epical series is less science fiction, and more a study in how human civilizations evolve. The premise of this novel is what makes it sf: Hari Seldon is a “psychohistorian” and mathematician that has predicted the end of the world. Seldon, Asimov’s prophet, is like the God of the Enlightenment; he is a clockmaker. More precisely, he has an insight to the universal forces that shape the lives of humans, and his formulas allow him an uncanny ability to predict how these forces will converge to shape the lives of humanity. The more I read of Asimov, the more I see he’s a product of the Enlightenment: the bigger picture we have, the more we can know the mind of God. Even when he’s pushing it to its limits, reason is always at the center of Asimov’s work.

At the start of the novel, Seldon predicts the fall of the galactic empire. Like a prophet of doom, he has measured and calculated beyond doubt that the current political and economic structure will collapse within a thousand years. Yet, instead of just making that prediction, he acts rationally to shape the results. Here’s where he becomes the clockmaker himself: he establishes a remote colony that will become pivotal in the continuity and the reshaping of a future empire. Seldon’s life ends before the new colony is established, and the rest of the novel examines the birth and early years of a new civilization on the remote galactic rim.

The rest of the novel is a collection of vignettes — interrelated short stories, really — that are really just socio-political experiments. Asimov’s protagonists become reflections of Hari Seldon. They are future history’s great men of action — the shapers of the civilization that Seldon predicted through his calculations — themselves like minor prophets in Asimov’s patriarchal pantheon. (In fact, this novel has a distinct lack of women. The only one I remember is the nagging, bitchy wife of a local king, whose only importance is to curry favor with her father on her husband’s behalf. Otherwise, Asimov makes very clear, the king would do away with her in a nanosecond.) Seldon would pop up as a pre-recorded hologram after every “Seldon crisis” to offer words of encouragement, but like all religious prophets, this dead messiah would be very careful not to tell them anything that would hint at future crises. How very God-like, eh?

I think Asimov is interested in the paradox of humanity: in the order we try to bring to chaos and the impermanence of that order. He is also interested in the motivations of imposed orders and the psychological powers that shape our lives. Foundation is big. Maybe too big. His novel seems to ask: what is the foundation of humanity? By knowing the answer to that question — or at least pretending to — he can proceed with his experiment. Are their integral and ingrained forces that determine our lives and how we structure the chaos? What happens when technology and science grow to such an extent that they are able to measure the convergence of those forces?

Clarke, too, is interested in these questions. In Childhood’s End, Clarke’s messiah comes in the form of the Overlords. (On a side note: anytime big space ships from outer space show up, it never turns out well for humanity. Hint.) These are a race of seemingly beneficent aliens that are interested in making sure that we humans don’t kill ourselves. The Overlords usher in a golden age for humanity, but one that brings with it a malaise. It’s a utopia — one that’s free of poverty, war, and inequality — but one that’s also free of ambition and scientific progress.

There are three separate narratives in Childhood’s End, unified by the guiding presence of the Overlords: the arrival; the golden years; the end. Like Asimov, Clarke is interested in the evolution of humanity. For the old or current civilization to grow, the old has to die. Clarke’s novel is as much about death as it is about life and continuity. When he brings in a Ouija board in the middle of the novel, the astute reader understands that Clarke is dealing not just with science and technology, but something that transcends the material world in what we might call a spiritual sense.

Whereas Asimov’s metaphysics is based on a mathematical understanding of the human sciences (making it perhaps hyper-physical), Clarke’s penetrates the material to speculate about what might lie beyond — that which is incapable of being measured by a computer, even Hari Seldon’s. In fact, Asimov’s work is remarkably free of aliens. He probably read aliens in sf as a metaphor for white male anxiety. We humans must help ourselves without the benefit of an outward, guiding force. In Clarke, we humans need a lot of help by much wiser races.

Both novels, in thinking about them together, are ultimately optimistic. One celebrates the ingenuity of humanity and technological progress, while one considers the spiritual uniqueness of the human race. Both novels end with a feeling of hope, yet this hope comes at price.

I’ll write more about metaphysical science fiction soon.

Kafka presents Gregor’s metamorphosis in such a way, and he gives textual clues to this rhetorical function based around how women are framed in the narrative.

The novella begins with Gregor waking into a nightmare. The first paragraph is a realistic expression of his new situation as a vermin. Gregor immediately tries to comes to terms with his uncertainty by looking around his small room — by looking to his comfortable and the predictable “normal human room.” Almost immediately, his eyes land on

Why is this here? It seems an unnecessary detail in light of Gregor’s situation. It does express certain characteristics of Gregor that are important to understand his change. Notice that the suggestive picture (is she naked other than the boa, hat, and muff?) has been framed in gilt — something plated in gold to look more valuable than it is. Perhaps this is Gregor’s attempt to bring artistic merit to a centerfold? More likely, it betrays his propensity to control.

Gregor has written his family: his mother is sick and needs help; his father is feeble and no longer able to work; his family has a mysterious debt to his employer that he must help them with; his sister needs to develop her musical abilities. Gregor has painted himself as the family’s savior, but he has also subordinated them to his life, marginalizing their capacities as human beings in favor of his framing of reality.

Compare the gilt frame with another framing at the end of the novella. Gregor hass died a lonely and prolonged death, and his family are now ostensibly free of his control. The novella closes with a framing of Meg, Gregor’s sister:

There’s a sinsiter quality here in their innocent-seeming thoughts. Yet, there is, perhaps, an inappropriate empahsis on her sexuality; they begin to frame her as a young woman of marrying age. They begin to write her future. Now that they themselves are free of Gregor’s power over them, they begin to assert their power on Meg.

Kafka seems to be commenting on the subtle and profound power of ideology in narrative.

This photo is by Mark James, and shows the Executive Board at Mailer’s house on the last night of the conference. I’m on the bottom left. See more photos from the 2007 Conference. And, if you have a Flickr account, make us a friend.

Goethe wrote Faust in two parts (Part I in 1808, Part II in 1832), and together they revise the Faustus legend to fit with Romantic sensibilities and eighteenth-century attitudes toward earthly life and the beyond. The theme of a man selling his soul to the devil for earthly desires—fame, knowledge, wealth, power—developed from a profound Christian belief in life after death. Goethe updates the legend by adding a prolonged love story, making his devil an ironic and mocking figure, and allowing Faust’s soul to escape damnation.

Read more on eNotes…

If you’re still troubled, think of things this way:
No one shall know our joys, save us alone,
And there’s no evil till the act is known;
It’s scandal, Madam, which makes it an offense,
And it’s no sin to sin in confidence. (Tartuffe, 4.5.116-120)

An overriding theme of Molière’s Tartuffe is not one of religion directly, but of that age-old concern of comme il faut, propriety, and appearance versus reality. The central problem that the play confronts is not with Tartuffe’s being a religious hypocrite (though, don’t we all just love those?), but with the fact that he uses his powers to manipulate others and — perhaps most importantly — the fact that his hypocrisy becomes known. Duping people is not evil; duping people to the point that it threatens their well-being may just be; duping them and having them find out definitely is.

The epigram above expresses this theme very eloquently, and it comes from the play’s anti-hero himself. Here, he is trying to seduce his patron’s wife Elmire, while she, in turn, is trying to show Tartuffe for the hypocrite he is; Orgon is hiding under the table and listening their heated conversation.

Tartuffe uses the Zeitgeist of the Enlightenment to prove his point; the word “think” echoes Descarte’s cogito ergo sum — I think, therefore I am — the centerpiece of the Enlightenment and its privileging of the individual’s reason over emotion and passion. His use of it, however, is ironic. While the Enlightenment thinkers aspired to moderate the passions through correctness and reason, Tartuffe seeks to fulfill his bodily desires by using arguments couched in reason. By thinking the world exists in this way, Tartuffe’s actions seek to make it so. One of the ironies here is that Tartuffe uses reason not to better himself morally, but to exercise his lust. This is not the only passion that Tartuffe seems to have in excess: he is also gluttonous, prideful, and greedy.

It seems Molière is asking his audience the question: what happens when reason is applied to furthering the goals of the body? This question should be familiar to us today: while society’s best people tell us to control ourselves, they themselves can’t seem to follow that advice. A student suggested that that those with the most power and authority in the play (thinking of Orgon and his mother, I’m sure), seem to be the ones who are the most blind to Tartuffe. It’s difficult for us to condemn Orgon, however; we all seem to have at least a bit of Orgon in us, no?

Orgon seems to be searching for an order beyond that of his immediate experience. Unfortunately, he chooses the wrong metaphysical guide. He is at the top of his game in other aspects of his life: he is the patriarch; he is well off; he has the favor of the king for his political support; he has a beautiful, younger wife; he has an heir and a lovely daughter. What is he lacking? Perhaps, like Tolstoy in his later years, he has the guilt of the rich and doubts that he has lived as a good servant of God. Can you see any support for this in the text? What is Orgon’s motivation for his seemingly blind devotion to Tartuffe? And why is Orgon the only one in his household fooled by the impostor?

Other themes addressed in Tartuffe

Hypocrisy is harmless until it threatens others. Throughout the play, Tartuffe remains a harmless nuisance until he believes that he has the legal upper hand. In fact, the entire house sees through his charade, but tolerates his presence because he seems to provide something for Orgon that they cannot.

Injustice must be set right by an external force. Tartuffe’s duping of Orgon cannot be solved by the latter — it takes a deus ex machina in the form of a writ from the king to set matters right. M. Loyal here might represent the unthinking servant of the law, but Louis himself as closest to God on earth. Sometimes the system is unjust, Molière seems to suggest, but hopefully the one in control of it is not. Here, Molière seems to depart with the enlightenment thinkers like Newton who saw God as the watchmaker — a depersonalized deity that has created a logical universe that only reason can divine. It does, however, make sense that a king should be the most reasonable human; while this might not be the case in our experience, Molière’s play suggests this ideal.

Following that, it seems that man-made codes are also sometimes ineffectual, unjust, and hurtful. Tartuffee challenges hierarchy, superstition, tradition, and conventional wisdom with its characters and situations. In many instances, Molière turns conventions and expectations on their heads: Dorine, while representing the lower class, might be the most shrewd; Tartuffe, while seemingly the most holy and selfless is, indeed, the opposite; Elmire, while look down on by Madame Pernelle as a indecorous coquette, is the driving force behind unmasking Tartuffe. Alternately, Cléante does seem to be the voice of reason, but he ironically ineffectual when he tries to make others see it.

Molière illustrates the tension between reason and passion that the Enlightenment thinkers were concerned with. What does Molière’s play seem to suggest about this epic battle? Does reason or passion win at the end?

Zeus, the king of the gods, demanded that strangers be treated graciously. Hosts had a religious duty to welcome strangers, and guests had the responsibility to respect hosts. The tight interconnections and mutual respect in this host-guest relationship are reflected in the fact that the word zenos in ancient Greek can mean both “host” and “guest.” The relationship is often symbolized in the Odyssey by the presentation of gifts. Alcinous, the king of the Phaeacians, for example, gives Odysseus a magically swift ship to get him home.

What happens when the host-guest relationship is abused or otherwise breaks down? In Homer’s epic songs of the Trojan War, the Iliad and the Odyssey, this happens at least three times. The first occasion caused the war itself: Paris, prince of Troy, ran off with the beautiful Helen from Sparta while he was a guest of Helen’s husband, Menelaus. For the Greeks, this insult to xenia (hospitality) was at least as serious as Helen’s unfaithfulness, and it meant that Zeus would, in the end, allow the Greeks to triumph in the long war.

The second example of violated hospitality has its humorous and ironic side. In the Odyssey, the Cyclops is monstrous not only because of his huge size and brutish appearance. He is set apart from civilized beings precisely because of his barbaric outlook on xenia. When Odysseus begs the Cyclops for hospitality and warns that Zeus will avenge an injured guest the Cyclops replies that he and his kind “care not a whistle for . . . Zeus.” With dark humor, the Cyclops uses the word xeineion (Greek for “guest-gift”) when he tells Odysseus that he will have the privilege of being eaten last. The poetic justice of the Cyclops’s blinding would not be lost on Homer’s Greek audience.

The final example of a breach in the law of hospitality underlies the entire plot structure of the Odyssey: Back in Ithaca, the suitors year after year abuse the hospitality of Odysseus — an absent “host” — and threaten to take away his wife. The bloody vengeance that Odysseus takes on these suitors should be understood in the context of their outrageous violation of religious law. The suitors have turned hospitality into a crude mockery. Perhaps it is not accidental that just before the battle Odysseus invokes the host-guest relationship when he quietly gives his son, Telemachus, the signal to fight:

Chew on that for a while. Thoughts to follow.

As the narrator states first thing: the subject of the Iliad is the rage of Achilles and the consequences of that rage for both the Achaeans and the Trojans. War effects not only the men who fight the battles, but also the women and children whose lives are then shaped by its outcome. War represents the worst and, ironically, the best of humanity: ugly brutality and terrible beauty. If you doubt this, look at the place violence holds in our culture; films like The Matrix even show violence as poetic: a graceful dance of destruction that thrills the audience like little else. We both pity with Hector and sympathize with Achilles; neither side of the war holds all of our sentiments. The final outcome of the war, then, becomes truly tragic: only one culture can continue while the other is destroyed or enslaved.

The Iliad‘s participants are the nobility of both cultures, or the aristoi: “the best people.” They are the hereditary holders of wealth and power, and their decisions effect all of the culture. For example, Agamemnon’s decision to infuriate Achilles at the outset of the Iliad has lasting effects on the Greek warriors during the last weeks of the Trojan War. Like most epics, of which the Iliad is really the definitive example, the action begins in medias res, a few weeks before the end of a ten-year campaign, with all of the epic’s traditional accouterments. The Iliad poses questions, as will the Odyssey, about the nature of political order and what humans must do to maintain that vision and structure. The initial contention in the Iliad is between the Greek champion Achilles and the Greek commander Agamemnon. Who has the stronger claim to right: Agamemnon who has the hereditary position, or Achilles, the one with merit? Ultimately does it matter? When swords are drawn, reason becomes irrelevant.

Upon reading the Iliad, I’m often struck by the selfishness of the culture of men. Indeed, one may argue that all wars since the beginning of time are about men and what they want to control: state, wealth, women. What will men do to maintain their view of order and structure? What are the consequences of the resulting pride, arrogance, destruction? In book one of the Iliad, we discover that because of Agamemnon’s refusal to relinquish Chryseis, Apollo has rained a plague upon the Achaean forces. Because he is eventually challenged by Achilles — who represents the wishes of the rest of the men — Agamemnon decides to claim Achilles’ prize (a girl named Briseis) to reassert his authority and put Achilles in his place for his challenge. Achilles shows cunning and restraint — qualities that are usually associated with Odysseus — in his argument with Agamemnon, while the latter rages and rails like a wounded child. Yet, when Agamemnon’s men take Briseis, Achilles, also child-like, begins to pout by his ships, cries to his mother, and refuses to play the war game anymore. This final decision precipitates the death of many Achaeans, including Achilles’ friend Patroclus. Achilles’ resulting rage ends with the death of Hector in book twenty-two, and Achilles’ own apocryphal death under the bow of Paris before the war’s end.

The brutality of Achilles and its consequences are most evident in Book XXII of the Iliad. Achilles’ rage blinds him to anything but the death of Hector, the Trojan champion that killed Patroclus in book sixteen. Replete with epic similes of the hunt, book twenty-two illustrates Hector’s own reluctance to do what he sees as his duty to face Achilles, yet thinks only of himself and what his people might think if he doesn’t face the Greek killing machine (cf. ll. 108-156). Hector’s resolve is soon shaken as he sees Achilles closing, bloody rage the only thing that Achilles sees. Hector flees, but is soon tricked by Athena into stopping to face Achilles, perhaps a commentary on Hector’s need for companionship and Achilles’ desire for only personal vengeance and renown. Hector is mercilessly murdered in front of Troy’s walls, like a fawn at the jaws of a lion.

The death of Hector, then, is given a final cultural context from Hector’s widow Andromache. She now sees the demise of Troy, but personally she sees no future for their son Astyanax. The death of the father, then, is a weighty metaphor for the Trojans: the order that they secured will soon be rendered useless by the barbarity of war; the father’s death leads to the destruction of social order. This theme will be taken up in the Odyssey as well: what is the responsibility of the son for maintaining order in the absence or death of the father? As Andromache sees no future for Astyanax, life does continue even after the carnage of war, yet a new order is imposed on the losers — those who escape death. This theme of continuity is also addressed by Virgil in his Aeneid.

Is war, then, a necessary component of human life? Just because it has been historically up until this point, are we to be like Achilles who could not hear reason through his bloody thoughts: “No truce / till one or the other falls and gluts with blood” (XXII.313-14)? When do we decide that war is better than order?