Penthesilea kills and devours Achilles

Penthesilea’s attack on Achilles is the culminating act of Heinrich von Kleist’s tragedy Penthesilea: the Amazon queen, feeling belittled by her lover, sets her dogs on him and devours his flesh. Her response turns a conflict between lovers into an act of killing and consumption, giving the tragedy’s passion a brutally destructive outcome.

Context and Conflict

Penthesilea is an Amazon queen described as prone to violent mood-swings. Her attack follows her sense that Achilles has belittled her. The evidence establishes this perceived slight as the circumstance leading to her action, without supplying further details of the exchange or of her reasoning.

The Attack

Penthesilea sets her dogs on Achilles and devours his flesh. The two acts make the violence both directed and intimate: Achilles is first attacked by the queen’s dogs, then consumed by Penthesilea herself. The account identifies the outcome plainly, without detailing the physical scene.

Tragic Significance

The lovers’ relationship does not resolve into reconciliation; the perceived belittlement instead precedes Achilles’s death at Penthesilea’s hands. The action concentrates the tragedy’s conflict in a reversal of love into destruction, while the evidence does not describe what follows for Penthesilea or provide the play’s ending.