Thetis wants Achilles to be a god, and in order to be a god, he needs to fight—that’s what his skills are for, and that’s the only way he’ll gain glory. Patroclus’s puzzlement therefore foreshadows future revelations about Thetis’s reasons for not wanting Achilles to fight. While Thetis and Patroclus would prefer Achilles not fight in this coming war, Thetis nonetheless still wants full control over Achilles—as made clear by her efforts to separate Achilles from Patroclus via marriage to Deidameia. And Deidameia, meanwhile, who thought she had a power, was just a pawn. Finally, this scene once again highlights how Achilles’s honor, unlike that of essentially anyone else in the novel, is innate to the degree that he doesn’t register embarrassment because he can’t even imagine being the subject of ridicule. The regular emphasis on this trait of Achilles is an indication that it is likely to be challenged at some point in the novel.