From: STUDENT B
To: barry
Sent: Friday, January 27, 2012 7:27 PM
Subject: English
Hey Barry how are your holidays going? excited to go back to school?I just finished reading ransom and im suprised to say that i enjoyed it, the only thing that i got a little bit lost on is the referencing to the greek gods and how they can influence their lives. I was just a little bit confused and was wondering if you could clear that up for me.Thanks :)
Hi B:
I'm glad that you enjoyed RANSOM. I love it. I think malouf is a wonderful writer.
Generally speaking: the Greeks believed the gods - Zeus, Athena, etc etc - DETERMINED everything.
They didn't just INFLUENCE - they determined. When Achilles destroys part of Apollo's temple, close to Troy, that god was angry with him and wanted to repay him for his lack of respect...
It had been foretold - by one of the oracles - that if Achilles fought at Troy, he would not come back alive.
So - that "default" position for Greeks(humans) was a sort of FATALISTIC acceptance that they had no real say over what happened to them. [Centuries later, Shakespeare observed:
"As flies to wanton boys are we to gods - they kill us for their sport."]
We directly meet TWO gods in the novel:
The goddess Iris "appears" to Priam ... It is not clear [to us as readers - OR to Priam himself - whether he is dreaming, or imagining, or that the experience is "real" ... but Iris plants the seed in Priam's head that - just maybe - humans CAN affect their own fate. That life is NOT ruled entirely by gods ... that chance plays a big part. Now to Priam - and to the Greeks - this was unheard of. It was, in many ways, blasphemy. It was saying: The gods are NOT all-powerful as you once believed; humans can in fact SHAPE their own destinies.
Now Malouf leaves it up to us, as readers, to make our own decision:
Was Priam dreaming? Was Priam's unconscious self telling him these things? Was Priam in a trance and imagining it all? or did the goddess Iris actually speak to Priam?
With the other god who appears directly in the novel - Hermes - Malouf presents him as "real" ... we do not question whether he is there; we simply accept it. After all, Hermes is not just "seen" (and perhaps "imagined" ) by Priam; Somax converses with him too. And Hermes guides the old men to Achilles' tent without the guards seeing them...
In the mind set of the ancient Greeks (as in the mindset of modern Evangelical Christians) it was perfectly acceptable to believe that the gods (or in the case of modern Christians and Moslems) would speak directly to humans.
One of the Christian hyms goes:
He lives, he lives Christ Jesus lives today
He walks with me and talks with me along life's narrow way
He lives, he lives, his wisdom to impart
You ask me how I know he lives: He lives WITHIN MY HEART.
So ... you might say: if we believe in something strongly enough, then for us, it EXISTS ... it is REAL...
I think that Malouf was "playing" with the idea of a human at a PARTICULAR MOMENT when his way of seeing the world CHANGES ... Priam is certainly insightful about WHY he is going... he has a GUT FEELING that this is the ONLY way he can regain the body of his son...by sheddin all the appearance, all the trappings, all the prestige of his "CEREMONIAL SELF" - ie Priam the king - and being nothing more, or less, that a man, begging another man for the body of his son.
Greek tales told of heroes behaving heroically, and being aided by the gods. Priam went "godlessly" to Achilles, went as SIMPLY a man. Like Somax. No longer Priam, and much more like his childhood self, when he was Podarces ...
I hope that helped.
I hope you've had a great holiday and I look forward to seein you in less than a week now.
Feel free to follow up with any further questions.
Barry
I'm glad that you enjoyed RANSOM. I love it. I think malouf is a wonderful writer.
Generally speaking: the Greeks believed the gods - Zeus, Athena, etc etc - DETERMINED everything.
They didn't just INFLUENCE - they determined. When Achilles destroys part of Apollo's temple, close to Troy, that god was angry with him and wanted to repay him for his lack of respect...
It had been foretold - by one of the oracles - that if Achilles fought at Troy, he would not come back alive.
So - that "default" position for Greeks(humans) was a sort of FATALISTIC acceptance that they had no real say over what happened to them. [Centuries later, Shakespeare observed:
"As flies to wanton boys are we to gods - they kill us for their sport."]
We directly meet TWO gods in the novel:
The goddess Iris "appears" to Priam ... It is not clear [to us as readers - OR to Priam himself - whether he is dreaming, or imagining, or that the experience is "real" ... but Iris plants the seed in Priam's head that - just maybe - humans CAN affect their own fate. That life is NOT ruled entirely by gods ... that chance plays a big part. Now to Priam - and to the Greeks - this was unheard of. It was, in many ways, blasphemy. It was saying: The gods are NOT all-powerful as you once believed; humans can in fact SHAPE their own destinies.
Now Malouf leaves it up to us, as readers, to make our own decision:
Was Priam dreaming? Was Priam's unconscious self telling him these things? Was Priam in a trance and imagining it all? or did the goddess Iris actually speak to Priam?
With the other god who appears directly in the novel - Hermes - Malouf presents him as "real" ... we do not question whether he is there; we simply accept it. After all, Hermes is not just "seen" (and perhaps "imagined" ) by Priam; Somax converses with him too. And Hermes guides the old men to Achilles' tent without the guards seeing them...
In the mind set of the ancient Greeks (as in the mindset of modern Evangelical Christians) it was perfectly acceptable to believe that the gods (or in the case of modern Christians and Moslems) would speak directly to humans.
One of the Christian hyms goes:
He lives, he lives Christ Jesus lives today
He walks with me and talks with me along life's narrow way
He lives, he lives, his wisdom to impart
You ask me how I know he lives: He lives WITHIN MY HEART.
So ... you might say: if we believe in something strongly enough, then for us, it EXISTS ... it is REAL...
I think that Malouf was "playing" with the idea of a human at a PARTICULAR MOMENT when his way of seeing the world CHANGES ... Priam is certainly insightful about WHY he is going... he has a GUT FEELING that this is the ONLY way he can regain the body of his son...by sheddin all the appearance, all the trappings, all the prestige of his "CEREMONIAL SELF" - ie Priam the king - and being nothing more, or less, that a man, begging another man for the body of his son.
Greek tales told of heroes behaving heroically, and being aided by the gods. Priam went "godlessly" to Achilles, went as SIMPLY a man. Like Somax. No longer Priam, and much more like his childhood self, when he was Podarces ...
I hope that helped.
I hope you've had a great holiday and I look forward to seein you in less than a week now.
Feel free to follow up with any further questions.
Barry
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