To what extent do you regard The Shield Of Achilles as characteristic E

To what extent do you visit The shelter Of Achilles as feature of Audens work as substantial?At first glance Audens meter the Shield of Achilles appears to befocused on the classical world. The rimes classical temperament is firstindicated by the title- Achilles was of course a famous Greek hero,and end-to-end the poem there be further classical references, homoyof which Auden has interpreted from Book XVIII of Homers Iliad- Marblewell-governed cities (l.3), athletes at their games (l.46),Hephaestos, hobbled absent (l.61). However, the poem also combinesthese classical details with the raw world- Proved by statistics(l.17), Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot (l.31). Althoughthere is this unmatched combination of classical and modern, the poemcan be seen as unfadingColumn by column in a cloud of scatter===================================They marched away enduring a beliefWhose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.(The Shield of Achilles ll.21-23)Here the arm y who argon enduring a belief (l.21) that they are doinggood can be as easily applicable to the modern day (i.e. the situationin Iraq) as to classical times. The timeless spirit of the poem can besaid to be a characteristic feature as it appears in other poems suchas Gare du musical instrument digital interface======================================================================clutching a little caseHe walks out briskly to tarnish a cityWhose terrible future may have safe arrived.(Gare Du Midi, ll.6-8)Here we are led to believe that a man is about to unleash a terribleweapon on a city and although the poem was written in December 1938,its proleptic nature allows the poem to be much more in tune with thew... ...atures, it is perhaps insurmountable tooutline a characteristic Auden poem. The Shield of Achilles lacksmany features that would make it characteristic. For example, poemssuch as Moon Landing and a qualifying After unfairness are rife withcolloquial (Mneh- Moon Landi ng, ll.22) and recherch (Lacrimaererum- A Walk After Dark, l.30) language, whereas The Shield ofAchilles has none, instead the language in the poem obeys the poemsprinciple of contrast- it alternates between classical and modernlanguage. consequently its reasonable to say that there are manyre-occurring themes passim Audens poems, but not that there areentire poems which are characteristic.---------------------------------------------------------------------1 It is notable that Ist family 1939 appeared on many websites after the September 11th attacks in 2001.