The narrative of theIliadis interrupted while Hephaestus makes Achilles new armor for Achilles' mother, the goddess Thetis, to carry to her son. He has lost his armor, and needs some new armor to fight. But re-entering the fray means he will die soon, so he has chosen to die as he seeks to avenge the death of his friend Patroclus.The action stops while we are treated to the description of the shield that Hephaestus makes for Achilles. Such a description that interrupts the action is called anekphrasis, a term we have encountered before.Auden's poem is a contrast between what Thetis expects to see and what Hephaestus actually embosses on the shield. What Thetis expects to see is taken from Homer's description. She looks for"vines and olive trees," "cities," "ships," "ritual pieties," "athletes," "Men and women in a dance,"etc.These are all elements in the shield as described by Homer. Homer inscribed his version of the shield with the whole world as he perceived it.Homer has a shield showing thecosmosas he understood it -1. The earth, sea, sun, moon, stars at the center.2. A city at war & a city at peace around that.3. Grapes, plowing, & reaping around that.4. Cattle, sheep, & dancing around that.5. The ocean on the outside enclosing everything.Auden sees a very different world & puts that new world on his version shield. Auden contrasts the heroic world of Achilles with the debased world of the mid-twentieth century. What both eras had in common was burtality and mortality. Auden reverses Homer's order. Homer describes civilization by two cities--one at peace, one at war. Next he describes the fields and crops. Auden describes fields without crops, "A plain without feature, bare and brown." Auden's world, like Homer's, has war. He describes a million of soldiers awaiting orders: ("a million boots in line, / Without expression, waiting for a sign.") It is inspired by "a voice without a face" (perhaps coming over the radio?) explaining how just the cause is. Auden's further describes a brutal execution of three men, much like Christ's crucifixion (31-44). "As three pale figures were led forth and bound To three posts driven upright in the ground."

It was a humiliating execution that killed them as men before killing their bodies. They "died as men before their bodies died." Auden is at perhaps the most extreme in his final description. Homer describes a village at peace, where the weddings takes place. He wrought also two cities, fair to see and busy with the hum of men. In the one were weddings and wedding-feasts, and they were going about the city with brides whom they were escorting by torchlight from their chambers. Loud rose the cry of Hymen, and the youths danced to the music of flute and lyre, while the women stood each at her house door to see them.In Auden's world, the brutalized brutalize others - a "ragged urchin" - probably a homeless child - throws rocks at a bird, and boys rape and kill girls.

Such is the world Auden's Hephaestus makes To please her son, the strong Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles Who would not live long.

The Shield of W.H. Auden W.H. Audens poem, The Shield of Achilles, offers the reader a bit of a different perspective on the glorious new shield which is given to the legendary Achilles in Homers epic poem,The Iliad.Homers depiction of the shield includes marble cities and constellations, war battles and farming fields, kings estates and grazing meadows. While Auden starkly contrasts Homers shield with one of his own imagination, replete with barren plains, mindless soldiers, war camps and vagabonds. What could be the reason for this? Simone Weil argues that despite Homers glorification of Achilles shield, the overall tone of his epic poem is one of intense bitterness towards the harsh realities of warfare (Weil 1965).[1] Keeping this in mind, Dr. Knowitall claims that Auden changed the images on the mighty shield of Achilles in order give his readers a scene more faithful to the bitterness which prevails in Homers work (Knowitall 1962). However, looking at Audens new rendition of the shield of Achilles, one can see that there are no changes made to the shields images which relate in any way to the plot of HomersIliad. Because of this fact, it is my claim that Audens reason for changing the shields imagery was not to offer his readers a more accurate rendition of Achilles shield, but to use the context of one of the most famous war stories of all time, as well as his experiences during World War II, in order to share with his readers his own views about the truths of war; that war is neither glorious nor laudable. When comparing Audens poem with the original version of the shield of Achilles in HomersIliad, the differences are quite distinct. The original glorifies images of peace and prosperity, while Audens is dark and pessimistic. But before we get into the tonal differences between the two shield descriptions, we will first take note of the imagery differences between the two. W.H. Audens poem was first published in 1955 shortly following the end of World War II.[2]As a result of this, Auden changes the images themselves on Achilles shield from Homers depictions of peace time in the Bronze Age to war time during Second World War. For example, while Homer described on the shield wedding celebrations with feasts and dancing and merrymaking, Auden wrote, Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood / An unintelligible multitude, / A million eyes, a million boots in line, / Without expression, waiting for a sign (Auden 1955).[3] This stanza in Audens poem references Hitlers Nazi forces, brainwashed and sculpted into a near-unstoppable war machine waiting for his command. While Homer depicted thriving vineyards and young boys and girls courting one another, Auden wrote, Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot / Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke) / And sentries sweated for the day was hot: / A crowd of ordinary decent folk / Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke / As three pale figures were led forth and bound / To three posts driven upright in the ground (Auden 1955).[4] This stanza in Audens poem references Hitlers infamous concentration camps during World War II and alludes to his despicable Final Solution as well. It is quite obvious to the reader of Audens poem that his new verses have nothing to do with HomersIliad. Audens changes the shields images in order to fit the more contemporary wartime period of the mid-twentieth century, and this directly relates to the extreme difference in tone between the two shield descriptions as well. Born in Birmingham, England, Auden moved to the United States in 1939 just before the outbreak of the Second Word War.[5] The one-eighty degree change in tone of Audens shield compared to Homers can be attributed to multiple rationales. The first is Audens experience with warfare following the destruction of England and Europe after WWII. Auden, having moved to the U.S. shortly before the start of the war, was forced to watch from the sidelines as his home country was savagely bombed by the Nazis during their campaign against all of Europe, England included. The second rational I will use to explain this change in tone is Audens disillusionment in mankind in general after Hitlers Final Solution and the events of the Holocaust during WWII. The Holocaust is considered to be one of the most horrific atrocities in human history and created shock and disbelief among the general public after its discovery. And the third is the general change in attitude towards warfare after WWI. The countries of the world faced major disillusionment after the conclusion of the First World War in the early twentieth century.[6] WWI was a major turning point in human history concerning warfare; this is due to the fact that various warfare tactics and technologies such as the machine gun, trench warfare, and chemical warfare were first utilized during the Great War. The introduction of such effective killing strategies and technologies for the first time in history led to catastrophic death tolls which the world was unprepared for. The new mentality of warfare which followed this Great War sharply contrasted the attitude of the Bronze Age when a certain degree of skill in swordplay at least was necessary for a man to be capable of slaying multiple other men on a battlefield where mostly one-on-one combat prevailed. Even in his poem, Auden reveals to the reader his own claim that war can always lead to one thing; grief. 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 (Auden 1955).[7] Looking at this specifically, this stanza is again be referring to the Nazis under Hitlers control through manipulative speech and politics. But looking at it more generally, Auden is also expressing his belief that war is inglorious and that the war-favoring logic will always lead its followers to grief. Audens message in writing his poem, The Shield of Achilles, was to send out his word to his readers that war was not laudable or majestic. His medium for voicing his message was through Homers verses of Achilles legendary shield inThe Iliad. In this way, Auden makes the depictions of war more accurate for the shield; however, he is not commenting and correcting the verses fromThe Iliad. Auden is taking the description of Homer and changing it to express his position based on more contemporary time periods.