Ransom is a novel that is structured around a series of relationships that explore the
experiences of fathers and sons: Priam and Hector; Peleus and Achilles; Achilles
and Neoptolemus; Somax and his sons. Ransom explores the bonds and the
dislocations that exist between father and son, and the sometimes terrible legacy of
guilt and pain that this relationship may represent. When Priam listens to the tragic
story of how Somax lost both his adult sons he is forced to admit to himself that
although ‘he too knew what it was to lose a son. He had lost so many in these last
months and years’, he was also compelled to wonder ‘if the phrase he had taken up
so easily, that he knew what it was to lose a son, really did mean the same for him
as it did for the driver. Whether what he had felt for the loss of Gorgythion ... and
Dorryclus and Isus and Troilus and the rest, was in any way comparable to what this
man had felt for a boy who was, after all, neither a prince nor a warrior, just a villager
like so many more’. (p.136)
Priam is forced to concede that in his role as a father he was acting in an equally
symbolic manner to his role as king. Of the loss of so many sons ‘he had no memory
of any one of them’ and when considering the intimate acts and gestures of
fatherhood that Somax recalls in such poignant detail, Priam must conclude: ‘ …
such an act of violent intimacy was hardly within his comprehension’. (p.138) Priam
understands that he has been a captive of ‘royal custom’, ‘the habit of averting his
gaze, always, from the unnecessary and particular’, but that it is precisely ‘the
unnecessary and particular’ that constitutes the very texture of human relationships,
particularly those most intimate relationships such that between a parent and child.
While his wife, Hecuba, can recall the beat of her unborn child’s foot beneath her
heart, Priam is left contemplating the absence of feeling, even the absence of
memory itself.
For Achilles this sense of dislocation is both physical and geographic, the temporal
dislocation created by the war, and also a more frightening vision of his son’s
paternal inheritance. Achilles envisions the death of Priam at the hands of his son:
‘Achilles feels the breath of a hot sword in the air. Sees, as through a momentary
opening in eternity, the old man Priam go sprawling. Hears the armed Fury, in a
burning glance across his shoulder, shout into the dark: “There, father! There,
Achilles! You are avenged!” ’. (p.186)
This apocalyptic vision of his son, Neoptolemus, avenging his death at the hands of
Priam’s own son Paris, causes Achilles to sit ‘soul-struck’ in an ‘annihilating
revelation’ of the unending cycle of violence that has been created between the
fathers and sons of this murderously intimate war. Malouf captures the quality of
murderous tribalism that the war has produced, a war that sets the sons against their
father’s enemies and ensures the vengeful response from the murdered man’s own
son. Through this allegory of familial conflict and violence Malouf uncovers the
essential irrationality of war. Both Achilles and Priam will be killed by the other’s
sons, a fate that will not be averted even after this moment of mercy and recognition
that has been achieved by Priam’s petition for the body of Hector.
experiences of fathers and sons: Priam and Hector; Peleus and Achilles; Achilles
and Neoptolemus; Somax and his sons. Ransom explores the bonds and the
dislocations that exist between father and son, and the sometimes terrible legacy of
guilt and pain that this relationship may represent. When Priam listens to the tragic
story of how Somax lost both his adult sons he is forced to admit to himself that
although ‘he too knew what it was to lose a son. He had lost so many in these last
months and years’, he was also compelled to wonder ‘if the phrase he had taken up
so easily, that he knew what it was to lose a son, really did mean the same for him
as it did for the driver. Whether what he had felt for the loss of Gorgythion ... and
Dorryclus and Isus and Troilus and the rest, was in any way comparable to what this
man had felt for a boy who was, after all, neither a prince nor a warrior, just a villager
like so many more’. (p.136)
Priam is forced to concede that in his role as a father he was acting in an equally
symbolic manner to his role as king. Of the loss of so many sons ‘he had no memory
of any one of them’ and when considering the intimate acts and gestures of
fatherhood that Somax recalls in such poignant detail, Priam must conclude: ‘ …
such an act of violent intimacy was hardly within his comprehension’. (p.138) Priam
understands that he has been a captive of ‘royal custom’, ‘the habit of averting his
gaze, always, from the unnecessary and particular’, but that it is precisely ‘the
unnecessary and particular’ that constitutes the very texture of human relationships,
particularly those most intimate relationships such that between a parent and child.
While his wife, Hecuba, can recall the beat of her unborn child’s foot beneath her
heart, Priam is left contemplating the absence of feeling, even the absence of
memory itself.
For Achilles this sense of dislocation is both physical and geographic, the temporal
dislocation created by the war, and also a more frightening vision of his son’s
paternal inheritance. Achilles envisions the death of Priam at the hands of his son:
‘Achilles feels the breath of a hot sword in the air. Sees, as through a momentary
opening in eternity, the old man Priam go sprawling. Hears the armed Fury, in a
burning glance across his shoulder, shout into the dark: “There, father! There,
Achilles! You are avenged!” ’. (p.186)
This apocalyptic vision of his son, Neoptolemus, avenging his death at the hands of
Priam’s own son Paris, causes Achilles to sit ‘soul-struck’ in an ‘annihilating
revelation’ of the unending cycle of violence that has been created between the
fathers and sons of this murderously intimate war. Malouf captures the quality of
murderous tribalism that the war has produced, a war that sets the sons against their
father’s enemies and ensures the vengeful response from the murdered man’s own
son. Through this allegory of familial conflict and violence Malouf uncovers the
essential irrationality of war. Both Achilles and Priam will be killed by the other’s
sons, a fate that will not be averted even after this moment of mercy and recognition
that has been achieved by Priam’s petition for the body of Hector.
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