Iliad
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Many readers of the Iliad often feel confused or even cheated when, by the end, they have not come across the story of the Trojan Horse. I know this as a fact because I did when I read this famous novel. I was actually really looking forward to reading the prequel of the Odyssey, but I soon realized that I wasn't missing anything: there just wasn't anything to miss. In fact, surprisingly, the Iliad covers a extremely short period near the beginning of the tenth year of the war (a matter of a few days ) and has a completely different topic as its theme: the wrath of Achilles and Zeus's promise to Achilles' mother. The Iliad covers the events from the time when the hero Achilles became offended with Agamemnon and withdrew from the fighting to his re-entry at the death of Patroclus, his battle with Hector, and the final encounter with the king of Priam. The Iliad transformed itself into a very compact and self-contained story. It seemed that it became, first and foremost, a character study (rooted in action narrative, but a character study nonetheless) of Achilles, the greatest of the Greek heroes.
For all that, and despite its enormous appeal through the ages, modern readers (especially me) often have a hard time dealing with Achilles. And in all honesty, from my point of view it seems hard to find him sympathetic. To me he seemed bad-tempered, self-absorbed, and arrogant...