BC, dependable as always

My most confrontational interlocutor (whom I shall call BC, for that, indeed is his name) first had this to say:

I find it a curiously consistent phenomenon that people of our day tend to favor Hector over Achilles, when it is perfectly obvious that Achilles is clearly both the central and the most interesting character in the poem, as well as being the tragic hero of the story. The story begins and ends with Achilles; all of the important plot and character development centers around Achilles. Indeed, I think it's fair to say that the Iliad describes the seminal moment of Western Civilization, since it is the original (in the literary if not strictly historical sense) moment of self-reflective self-awareness. The tragedy of the story is that Achilles, in the end, chooses death in perfect self-awareness, and he is the only truly self-aware character in the story. It is Achilles' self-reflection that leads to Oedipus (another tragedy of self-knowledge) and Socrates, and on and on.

But my question is, what is it about our age that prevents us from seeing Achilles as the tragic figure he is? What does this tell us about ourselves?

My initial e-mail response, too casual as it turned out, was as follows:

Wow! Replace every "Hector" with "Achilles", and every "Achilles"
with "Hector," and I agree. The Iliad begins with the rage of Achilles--
-which is half of the subject of the poem; but ends with "And so the
Trojans buried Hector, tamer of horses"---the other half.

Hector is entirely aware that he is facing his own destruction, that he
can in one sense choose not to face Achilles, but that in another sense
(i.e. "but for fate/the will of the gods"), he has no choice to make.
Hector, moreover, excels Achilles in every way except as a killer.

Perhaps Achilles is aware that choosing glory for himself means
choosing to die; but he is certainly not "self-reflective;" between
long life and glory, there is no choice for him to make. I'm reminded
of a conversation I had with Robert Fagles last year, at a DS guest-
lecture, where Fagles made it clear he felt that Achilles mulling over
whether or not to go back home at the beginning of the poem is a kind
of mockery of introspection, and that, furthermore, Homer was an Ionian
who subtly yet perceptibly sided with the Trojans.

For those who haven't experienced the joy of a Yale education, DS is a freshman humanities program filled with some very smart kids but way too many insufferable over-achievers.