The Shield of Achilles – W. H. Auden

She looked over his shoulder

For vines and olive trees,

Marble well-governed cities

And ships upon untamed seas,

But there on the shining metal

An artificial wilderness

And a sky like lead.

A Plain without a feature, bare and brown,

No blade of grass, no sign of neighbourhood,

Nothing to eat and now here to sit down,

Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood

An unintelligible multitude,

A million eyes, a million boots in line,

Without expression, waiting for a sign.

Out of the air a voice without a face

Proved by statistics that some cause was just

In tones as dry and level as the place:

No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;

Column by column in a cloud of dust

They marched away enduring a belief

Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

She looked over his shoulder

For ritual pieties,

White flower-garlanded heifers,

Libation and sacrifice

But there on the shining metal

Where the altar should have been,

She saw by his flickering forge-light

Quite another scene.

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot

Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)

And sentries sweated for the day was hot:

A crowed of ordinary decent folk

Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke

As three pale figures were led froth and bound

To three posts driven upright in the ground.

The mass and majesty of this world, all

That carries weight and always weighs the same

Lay in the hands of others they were small

And could not hope for help and no help come;

What their foes liked to do was done, their shame

Was all the worst could wish, they lost their pride

And died as men before their bodies died.

She looked over his shoulder

For athletes at their games,

Men and women in a dance

Moving their sweet limbs

Quick, quick, to music,

But there on the shining shield

His hands had set no dancing floor

But a weed-choked field.

A ragged urchin, aimless and alone

Loitered about that vacancy, a bird

Flew up to safety from his well aimed stone;

That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,

Were axioms to him, who’d never heard

Of any world where promises were kept,

Or one could weep because another wept.

The thin-lipped armourer,

Hephaestos hobbled away,

Thetis of the shining breasts

Cried out in dismay

At what the god had wrought

To please her son, the strong

Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles

Who would not live long.

“The Shield of Achilles” is the title poem in the volume of poems entitled, The shield of Achilles. Thus it is a very late poem in the career of Auden. The lyric is divided into three parts, and each part consists of three stanzas. Thus there are nine stanzas in all. in each part the first stanza is in short lines , incantatory and sing-song, with frequent Homeric echoes; the nest two stanzas are in longer lines. In the third part the third stanza with which lyric closes again incantatory and sing-song with Homeric echoes.

In this lyric Auden has used the mythical technique popularized by T.S. Eliot, to make his comment on the modern condition. The mythical method consists in juxtaposing the past and the present, with the past serving as a comment, on the present. The past is contrasted with the present, the similarities between the two are stressed, and in this way some particular experience of situation is universalized. But the differences also stressed and in this way the decadence and desolation of the contemporary world is brought out. According to Monroe K. Spears in the poem The Shield of Achilles “…. The shield symbolizes art, image of the human condition. Auden’s version, however, is mock heroic, contrasting the Homeric description to the life the modern artist must represent. In the shield of art Hephaetus (the artist) shows Thetis (the audience), not the classical city, but the plain of modern life on which multitudes are ordered about by totalitarian rulers (a faceless reciting statistics through a loudspeaker) In stead of the ‘ritual pieties’, we have barbed wire enclosing an ‘arbitrary spot’ where there is a travesty to the crucifixion being performed by bureaucrats --- while ‘ordinary decent folk’ watch, --- in which helpless individuals are shamefully deprived of human dignity before death.”

Summery

Thetis, the mother of Achilles, in Greek mythology, looks at the shield hung over the shoulder of her son. The shield of Achilles was made by Hephaestus, the black smith of the gods, and on it the artist had carved beautiful scenes depicting orchards, well governed cities with marble statues and calm seas with beautiful ship sailing on them. But the artist on a modern shield carves quite different scenes. There are scenes depicting the artificial and desolate life of the contemporary wasteland. It depicts a vast plain, desolate, bleak and barren, without anything to eat, or place for rest and shelter. This is the modern wasteland, full of crowds, who like dumb-driven cattle are unable to think for themselves, and mechanically carry out dictates of their leaders and rulers, They are men all hallow within. Their rulers have no personal contacts with them. They speak to them in an impersonal voice, over the radio, prove by statistics that their cause is just, and so persuade them to go to the war in which they are sure to be killed. It is a terrible world of the past has been juxtaposed with the desolate and bleak modern age and in this way its hollowness has been commented upon.

In the second part, it is the religious decay and desolation in the modern age that is commented upon. On the Homeric shield, as on the Grecian Urn of John Keats, were carved scenes of religious rituals, showing cows decorated with flowers, and wine and food being served in celebration of some ceremony. But on the modern shield are carved big concentration camps where pale prisoners of was are tied to the stake, and brutally shot dead. In the past also there was much cruelty. Christ was crucified, but the crucification was necessary for the regeneration and redemption of mankind. It was martyrdom. But the mass killing in the modern age carries no such significance. They are merely a measure of the spiritual degeneration of the contemporary waste landers, who helpless and spiritless allow themselves to be treated and massacred like dumb driven cattle.

In the third part we are told that on Homeric shield was carved pictures of Athletes busy in their games, and men and women dancing rhythmically and sweetly. On the modern shield, on the other hand, there are no dancing floors or playgrounds but only ‘weed-choked’ fields. There are no sportsman but only ‘ragged urchins’ callously throwing stones at birds, or girls being raped, or boys quarrelling among themselves and knifing each other. Life is brutal and beastly, entirely lacking in the sympathy, love and friendship, which characterized life in the past. Was ad violence in the past was not soul-less or brutal as it is today. In the past there were heroic warriors, like Achilles, fighting for their religion, for their country, or for their beloveds; today there are only ‘ragged-urchins, and senseless violence. The contemporary scene terrifies Thetis, and the lyric ends as she goes away crying with dismay.

Thus by using the mythical technique Auden has telescoped whole ages of history within the compass of small lyric, and commented upon the spiritual decay and desolation in the modern age.

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