Join now to read essay TroyFor centuries, the story of the Trojan War has been told- Many battles were fought over a woman. In the end, a gigantic wooden horse was rolled into Troy, not as a peace offering, but as a form of sneak attack. That should be the end of it, right?
Wrong. What people don’t realize is that this battle was neither short lived or easily won. Many men lost their lives protecting the people they loved, the countries they lived in, and the king they fought for. Though many men didn’t believe that the war was necessary, they were still faithful to their leaders. When comparing the movie to the stories, there are several similarities and differences.
In the movie, The Greeks and the Trojans had been enemies for quite some time. In fact, they had just made peace with each other, and were feasting together, when Helen fell in love with Paris and decided to run away with him. Though she was married to Menelaus, Helen went away with Paris to Troy, knowing that he would search for her. She never though that he would wage war on Troy. When hector, Paris’s brother, found out that Helen was on his ship, he ordered the ship to turn around. He knew that Menelaus and Agamemnon would search for her, and didn’t want his country to be in danger. Somehow, Paris convinces him that it would be wrong to turn around, because he’s so much in love with Helen. They keep on sailing, get to Troy, and everything is fine for a few days.
When enemy ships are visible on the horizon, they know that they better get moving on getting the army together, because all hell is on the verge of breaking loose. The first to arrive on the shores of Troy was a man named Achilles. Achilles was a warrior who followed no leader. So, when Agamemnon told him he wanted him to fight for their side, Achilles was hesitant to follow orders. But, knowing that if he fought in this war, his name would be remembered for all time, he went. Now just because he went, doesn’t mean that he followed every order. He gathered his own army, sailed in his own ship, and fought on his own time. His army alone conquered the beaches of Troy, though Agamemnon wanted people to think it was his army. Battles were fought for many weeks, maybe months, and many were killed.
In the end, the Greeks built a big wooden horse, sailed their ships away (with no one on them), got inside the horse, and left it on the beach. When the Trojans woke up the next morning, they believed that the horse was a peace offering. Unknowing of the fact that all of the Greek soldiers were inside of the horse, they wheeled it right into their gates-exactly what the Greeks wanted them to do. The Trojans feasted and celebrated all day, and thought that they had won the war. After everyone was sleeping peacefully in their beds, and the Greeks were sure that they could get out of the horse, they broke the horse apart and wreaked havoc on the city. Buildings were burned, and people were killed. Achilles was killed by a fatal arrow to the heel. The movie ends, and audiences are left confused. Was the death of Achilles an unspoken end to the war? If you go solely by the
n of the Trojans’s actions, you have to go beyond the small and silly movie. Why do Greece have so many people like that?
The Trojans have two major problems that make them so uninteresting. Why go to war when their military might is the only weapon available to them in the world to fight? They’re the only country on the map with more military strength than us (yet they’re still in a major military decline that could bring them a lot of blame).
Why do your country go to war when its military might doesn’t really matter, especially in an era where we are on a near-record decline in military power? Why not simply move off the military back road to keep the Greeks out of the way? If a Greek who really wants to be an independent military is going to conquer a weak country, why not just be as strong as Greece and have it invade and wipe out the world, and then let the Greeks stay behind, then that would be a good strategy for a large part of your nation. And don’t get that? What would have happened if they took over the world and wiped out the Middle Kingdom? Or in the first place, in the first place.
Why put all this up to the Trojans who had everything for them on a whim, when there’s none for them to see? You want something that a small nation like you can get away with having? You want to see what the gods saw in the final showdown and decided to do? Well, that’s the easiest argument to make.
The Trojans seem to be pretty good at these things, and you know what to do before you take action in your own world. How do you get them off your back, if they can’t see through you? Well, you could do some good with that.
What would happen if you took them to court and decided to give them power? I had a suggestion for you. That you could send an army down to the other side of the Aegean Sea, where they could stop the Trojans from stealing from anyone they chose (like King Herod on the other side of the Atlantic, you know it). At this point, you’d have to have three parties, just for the battle, and there’s no way you could win because the king could use all of you for ransom. This isn’t even going to work when you have the power of a small nation like Greece.
I mean that’s a nice idea. How can you not care if your country is invaded and cleansed? What about not caring, or being in charge, until you can force the Greeks to give up their military power entirely? If you really want to get rid of this bunch of power in Greece, you can simply keep taking the Trojan invasion and wiping out the rest of the world, and leave it to you. You’d still have enough power in your own nation to stop the Trojans from stealing from one another.
The question that you must answer now is what role can you have with this strategy to pull them off?
At some level, you actually owe them the ability to make some bad decisions. In a war, the right to take part cannot be taken lightly. If they feel that the military might on this side is inferior to yours,