Philoctetes gained the favor of the god, Heracles, for helping light the then, mortal's funeral pyre, and was given Heracles' bow and poisoned arrows. He was the "wounded warrior," symbolizing the "traumatized man," and recovers from his sorrows, to go on to help the Greeks win the Trojan War, with the special knowledge he had learned from his wounds. He is like the Phoenix, rising from the ashes, and more - the vitality and exhilaration in the masculine instincts that comes from learning lessons out of losses, the "underdog," who rises up with special knowledge that cannot be possessed without the advantage of having been wounded.
Philoctetes competed for the hand of Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world. In an attempt to win her, he had to show valor in fighting the Trojan War, but when bitten by a snake on the ship along the way, Philoctetes was left by the other sailors to die, stranded on the island of Lemnos. Philoctetes was exiled by the Greeks and was angry at the treatment he received from Odysseus, who had advised the sailors to strand him. Philoctetes himself remained on Lemnos, alone, for ten years.
Helenus, was forced to reveal, under torture, that one of the conditions of the Greeks' winning the war was that they needed the bow and arrows of Heracles. The Greek sailors returned Lemnos to get Heracles' weapons from Philoctetes. Surprised to find the archer alive, the Greeks did not know what to do about their banished former brother. Heracles, who had become a god many years earlier, came down from Olympus and told Philoctetes to go and that he would be healed by the sons of the immortal physician Asclepius, to heal his wound permanently.
Philoctetes challenged and would have killed Paris, who stole away Helen. Philoctetes killed Paris after having argued to continue to try to storm the city. Philoctetes was among those chosen to hide inside the Trojan Horse, and during the storming of the city he also killed many famed Trojans.