The shield of Achilles is a famous image in Homer's Iliad. The shield shows a world of farming, religious ritual, and ordinary life quite different from the world of warfare that takes up so much of Homer's epic. The shield reassures us that there is more to ancient life than the Trojan War and its slaughters and horrors.

In Auden's poem, a woman, initially only described as "she," is looking for reassuring images on a modern shield. She searches for

Vines and olive trees, / Marble well-governed cities / And ships upon untamed seas

Unfortunately, these images do not exist on the shield she views. Here, in contrast to ancient times, war is depicted as total and wholly dehumanizing. It invades every aspect of life, leaving no part of the world untouched. Instead of vineyards and olive trees on this shield, as existed in ancient times, there is only a bare, brown plain entirely devoid of life. Instead of the joy of religious ritual, the woman sees only barbed wire and "ordinary" people viewing an execution. Instead of athletes at games and people dancing, she sees images of rape and two boys stabbing a third. These contrasts with the original shield are jarring.

The reality, says Auden, is that in the modern world, warfare and ordinary life cannot exist side by side as they once could. Modern warfare is contrasted to ancient warfare and comes up short, for it is too brutal. In the last stanza, the poet laments the fact that the modern shield shows a scene so grim. We find out now that Thetis, Achilles's mother, is the "she" who throughout the poem has been looking for the civilized life that balances war. Not seeing it, she "cries out in dismay."