In these middle books, many things happen, but few things change. Th rough these middle books, and long battle sequences, the Iliad ’s melodramatic alignment structure allows the narrative to stretch in almost every direction but forwards. From one point of view, nothing at all has happened in these last seven or more hours of performance time. Th ey started with a draw between Hektor and Aias; they end the same way. Th ey start with the Trojans fi ghting nearer the ships than ever before; they end the same way. A wall is built, and breached.
Achilles remains, as ever, apart. But the world and all its characters have become so much the richer for this time spent in it, and with them.
Hektor remains through these books much more at the forefront of battle than he was before his trip to Troy, but he still weaves in and out of the narrative:
there is true narrative strategy in building investment in him before unleashing him on the battlefi eld. Once Hektor is on the fi eld, the narrative provides many new perspectives on the Trojan hero, from companions (like Poulydamas), enemies (like Aias or Idomeneus) and from the gods themselves (like Poseidon).
Yet at the intersection of all these perspectives, Hektor remains elusive: the narrator constantly plays with his recognition, alignment, and allegiance that the epic’s early books worked so hard to construct. Th e narrator overhauls Hektor many times, portrays him as a mad man (13.53), a rabid dog (8.299), Gorgon- eyed (8.348f.), a slatherer (15.605–9), a night- faced force like fi re (12.463–6). But through these sequences the audience also sees shows his vulnerabilities and his concerns: he is injured so badly that he nearly dies (14.409–39), and on diff erent occasions the audience can see how much his men and his people care for him, and what his men and city, in turn, mean to him.
Th is ‘middle’ also provides its audience with a map towards Hektor’s death. Of course the traditional audience will have already known that Hektor dies, and a practised audience might have guessed it from his time in Troy in Book 6. But
through these middle books, from Zeus’s fi rst prophecy that Achilles will check Hektor when he reaches the ships (8.470–83) to the narrator’s note that Hektor’s death- day fast approaches (15.612), now there can be no doubt that Hektor will die. And while that fact does not change Hektor , for those who know that Hektor will die, whether it be the narrator, Zeus, or the audience, it changes us , in how we think of Hektor. Everything now that he says or does will be judged, at least in part, against the knowledge that he will soon die. It becomes, for better or worse, a part of him.
Ends
Th e transition between Book 15 and Book 16 might not qualify for most as the beginning of the end of the Iliad , 1 but it is the beginning of the end for Hektor.
Th e fi rst books of the Iliad build the storyworld and introduce most of its many characters. Th e middle books point towards major events, while keeping the narrative in balance. In exploiting and expanding its melodramatic alignment structure, the narrative spends this time deepening familiar characters and introducing new ones, building audience alignment and allegiance with many of them. Th ese fi nal books fi nally let the major events pointed to in earlier episodes happen to those characters whom the narrative has built audience allegiance with; this allegiance means that those events will have emotional consequences for the audience. Hektor has now reached the ships (15.704–46).
Patroklos has run to fetch Achilles to battle (15.390–405). Th e wheels are in motion, rolling towards events that have already been spelled out. Sarpedon will die (15.66f.). Patroklos will die (15.65). Achilles will return to battle, and he will kill Hektor (15.68).
Th ese ‘ends’ aff ect how an audience builds allegiance with any given character, but they do nothing to dampen the curiosity of how the narrative will arrive at them. 2 If anything, knowing an ending builds more intense engagement and curiosity than not knowing. Many serial narratives rely on this fact, and will give an ‘end’ fi rst, in order to set the challenge to its audience of picking up puzzle pieces along the way that might lead to that end. Consider the opening beat of Hannibal’ s second season. Th e show is based on Th omas Harris’s novels, which have also received multiple fi lm adaptations, so, like the Iliad , it also has a
‘traditional’ audience. Th at audience for Hannibal knows that eventually, its protagonist Hannibal Lecter will be caught out as the cannibal serial killer that he is and imprisoned. Th e series’ second season plays on this traditional knowledge and opens with a brutal fi ght scene between Hannibal Lecter and FBI Agent Jack Crawford: then a title card sets the next scene at ‘twelve weeks earlier’ and shows Hannibal and Jack sitting down for a nice dinner. Any audience 147
member, then, watches the next twelve hours or so of the story trying to fi gure out how Jack and Hannibal end up where they do; the traditional audience will be waiting to see if this scene leads to Hannibal’s arrest. Everyone wants to know how Hannibal will fi nally be caught out. Complaining about the use of this television narrative strategy (termed here an ‘ in media res opening’), critic Todd VanDerWerff pointed to Hannibal as a clear exception:
Th ere are very rare occasions (like on the second- season premiere of Hannibal) where the audience will say “Ooooh! I can’t wait to get to that!”. . . It works because it teases a point of no return, a moment that the story cannot turn back from. 3
So similarly the audience of the Iliad now lies in wait, waiting to see how and when Sarpedon and Patroklos and Hektor and (maybe even) Achilles will die.