Folk sagas, and epics, develop around a common sequence. A hero is isolated from his society, he enters a land of mystery, is tested by a confrontation with some dread power, he undergoes a symbolic death, and experiences a life-enhancing return to those he left behind. At the end, he is reinstated into the world of men. Joseph Campbell documents the ubiquity of this progression in Asia, Africa, North America, and Europe.
The most prominent fact which seems to contradict the above order in the Iliad is the absence of any land of fantasy into which Achilles travels, and, along with this omission, the absence too of any weird or supernatural being against whom the hero must contend. We may even say that their is no real journey that the hero undertakes, for the action of the story lies consistently around Troy. Achilles appears static: he sits in a perfectly ordinary tent. However, this turn of the usual plot achieves something new: it allows Homer to suggest Achilles as an inwardly existing personality, whose mental estrangement is all the more clearly defined by the physical continuities about him. Unlike Odysseus and the many wandering heroes who get blown off course, lose their way in the woods, or who are kidnapped on their wedding nights, Achilles is within reach. Yet he remains apart.