ENGLISH TEXT SUMMARY NOTES Ransom Text guide by: Scott Langan
Ransom 2 Copyright TSSM 2010 TSSM ACN 099 422 670 ABN 54 099 422 670 A: Level 14, 474 Flinders Street Melbourne VIC 3000 T: 1300 134 518 F: 03 97084354 W: tssm.com.au E: info@tssm.com.au
Ransom 3 Contents AUTHOR NOTES... 4 HISTORICAL CONTEXT... 5 GENRE... 7 Audience... 7 STRUCTURE... 8 STYLE... 10 Symbols... 11 SETTINGS... 14 PLOT SUMMARY... 16 CHARACTER PROFILES... 21 Protagonists and Antagonists... 21 Construction of Character... 21 Major Characters... 22 Minor Characters... 25 Relationships between Characters... 30 THEMES AND ISSUES... 31 Honour through Battle: The Hero... 31 Paternal (and Maternal) Love... 32 Grief and Grieving... 32 Talk: Communication through Action... 33 Fate and Chance: Visions and Visitations... 34 IMPORTANT QUOTATIONS... 36 EXPLANATION OF EXAMINATION CRITERIA... 41 SAMPLE ESSAY TOPICS... 42 FINAL EXAMINATION TIPS... 44 REFERENCES... 45 References Used... 45 References for Students... 45 Note: All page numbers provided throughout this piece are taken from: Malouf, David. Ransom. Random House, Australia 2009 (2010 Edition).
Ransom 4 AUTHOR NOTES David Malouf is one of Australia s most celebrated and awarded writers. David George Joseph Malouf was born in Brisbane, Queensland, in 1934. He undertook his secondary education at Brisbane Grammar School between the years of 1947-1950. He then attended the University of Queensland from 1951 1954. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in English. He was then employed as a lecturer at the University of Queensland until 1957. From 1962-1968 he was employed as a teacher at St. Anselm's College in England. He then moved back to Australia to take up a lecturing position at the University of Sydney from 1968-1977. He currently lives in Australia. He has won numerous Awards, including the Australian Literature Society gold medal in 1974 and 1983. He has also won the Grace Leven prize in 1975, the James Cook award in this same year, an Australia Council fellowship in 1978, the New South Wales Premier's prize, for fiction, in 1979, The Age Book of the Year award in 1982, the Commonwealth prize for fiction in 1991, the Prix Femina Étranger in 1991, the Miles Franklin award also in this same year as well as the New South Wales award for fiction. He has also won the Los Angeles Times Fiction prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary award in 1993. On top of these literary awards, he also received an Order of Australia for his work, as a writer and an intellectual, in 1987. Malouf writes in many forms. He has published novels, short stories, plays, poetry, contributed writing as an editor and produced academic treatise and theses. He also writes libretti for opera. He was invited to deliver the Boyer lectures for the Australian Broadcasting Commission in 1998. Each year the ABC board invites a prominent Australian or group of Australians to present six radio lectures expressing their thoughts on major social, cultural, scientific or political issues. That David Malouf was chosen to present these lectures is testament to his status as an iconic Australian whose body of work has done much to help Australians come to know themselves as individuals within a contemporary national identity.
Ransom 5 HISTORICAL CONTEXT The focus of Malouf's novel is a small section of Homer's Iliad, the epic poem that tracks the ten year war between the city of Troy (or Ilios) and the combined Greek city states. In the novel, Troy's King Priam travels to the enemy Greek encampment to beg the warrior Achilles to release the body of Hector. Hector is Priam s son, whom Achilles killed in revenge for the death of his friend, Patroclus. Achilles is the warrior son of a water nymph and a human. Priam, himself partly descendant from the gods, casts off his majesty and approaches his enemy as a man wanting to ransom the body of his son, in order to give him an honourable burial. The narrative in Ransom is focussed on the events of this one day. The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. This excerpt, from the key passages which Malouf focuses on for his narrative, gives a sense of the emotional power in this part of the epic. As when some cruel spite has befallen a man that he should have killed someone in his own country, and he must fly to a great man's protection in a land of strangers, and all marvel who see him, even so did Achilles marvel as he beheld Priam. The others looked one to another and marvelled also, but Priam besought Achilles saying, "Think of your father, O Achilles like unto the gods, who is such even as I am, on the sad threshold of old age. It may be that those who dwell near him harass him, and there is none to keep war and ruin from him. Yet when he hears of you being still alive, he is glad, and his days are full of hope that he shall see his dear son come home to him from Troy; but I, wretched man that I am, had the bravest in all Troy for my sons, and there is not one of them left. I had fifty sons when the Achaeans came here; nineteen of them were from a single womb, and the others were borne to me by the women of my household. The greater part of them has fierce Mars laid low, and Hector, him who was alone left, him who was the guardian of the city and ourselves, him have you lately slain; therefore I am now come to the ships of the Achaeans to ransom his body from you with a great ransom. Fear, O Achilles, the wrath of heaven; think on your own father and have compassion upon me, who am the more pitiable, for I have steeled myself as no man yet has ever steeled himself before me, and have raised to my lips the hand of him who slew my son." Thus spoke Priam, and the heart of Achilles yearned as he bethought him of his father. He took the old man's hand and moved him gently away. The two wept bitterly - Priam, as he lay at Achilles' feet, weeping for Hector, and Achilles now for his father and now for Patroclous, till the house was filled with their lamentation. But when Achilles was now sated with grief and had unburthened the bitterness of his sorrow, he left his seat and raised the old man by the hand, in pity for his white hair and beard; then he said, "Unhappy man, you have indeed been greatly daring; how could you venture to come alone to the ships of the Achaeans, and enter the presence of him who has slain so many of your brave sons? You must have iron courage: sit now upon this seat, and for all our grief we will hide our sorrows in our hearts, for weeping will not avail us. 1 1 The Internet. The Classics Archive: The Iliad, by Homer, written 800 B.C.E. Translated by Samuel Butler. http://classics.mit.edu/homer/iliad.24.xxiv.html as accessed on 27th May 2010.