RANSOM –
the opening pages: a commentary
1. On storytelling
Most stories begin with clarity: we know the who and where and when within a
few lines. Fairy tales, for example, establish these things in the opening
sentences.
For example:
Once upon a time there was a boy and his name was Jack, and he lived with his mother.
Jack’s mother loved him dearly, and as a result, Jack was a bit of a mummy’s
boy. Now Jack and his mother were very poor, and one day, his mother decided
that they could no longer afford to keep the family cow…
“Jack,”
she said, “I want you to take the cow in to town, to the market, and sell her ,
for we don’t have enough money to buy food …Already we know who are the main characters
– Jack and his mother; we know when the story takes place – it’s in that
indeterminate “once upon a time” of fairy stories; and we know where – in a
house near a village.
IN the opening pages of Ransom, Malouf doesn’t disclose the name
central character. We know this character is crouching on a stony
beach, but where? And why? WE know the character is “listening for the voice” of his mother, and that he has some strange affinity with the sea. We know he is a fighter.
Perhaps Malouf wants us to see this character as HE wants to present him. Perhaps Malouf thought that if we already knew the character’s name – Achilles – we (the readers) would then make the link with the legendary character and assume the two to be one.
2. Malouf’s underlying ideas/beliefs/world view
The notion that we human are made of dust goes back a long way. The Christian Bible’s account of the creation of human beings goes like this:
…the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Genesis, Ch 2
In chapter 3 it reads:
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. St James version
By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return." Recent translation
The Christian burial service includes the phrase: “from dust we came and to dust we shall return”. So when Malouf writes, as he does, saying of Achilles that ‘earth is his element’, he is drawing on a long tradition. And he goes on to write: ‘One day, he knows, he will go back to it.”
So this insight into human origins and human nature is an ancient one.
The Greeks burial ceremonies included a form of cremation, with the
bodies of the dead burned on a funeral pyre – as happens with the corpse of
Patroclus, in Ransom.
But Malouf gives a very modern account of this understanding, one derived from atomic and sub atomic physics. Malouf says of Achilles:
… earth is his element. One day, he knows, he will go back to it. All the
grains that were miraculously called together at his birth to make just these
hands, these feet, these corded fore-arms, will separate and go their own ways
again. He is a child of the earth…”
This account of particles – grains – coming together and then dispersing is in accord with the way physicists describe the state of matter. Matter is in a constant state of flux.
Atoms and sub atomic particles are constantly on the move. With each breath inhaled,
with each morsels of food we eat, with each mouthful of fluid we are taking in
new particles; and with each breath exhaled, each sneeze, with each drop of
sweat or flake of skin, with each movement of our bowels, each time we urinate –
we are expelling particles from our body that were once part of the whole. It has been estimated that over a period of seven years, every particle that ever formed a part of us is expelled and replaced.
There’s an old ‘joke’ about a wood cutter who claims that he
has been using the same axe for the past 60 years. And in that time, he’s only replaced the handle eight times, and the blade of the axe four times!
And what happens to the expelled particles? They are carried in water, carried by the wind … they drift off into space, they travel to infinity and beyond.
And no matter how solid, how unchanging aspects of our bodies and our
environment may seem, the truth is that … all the grains that were miraculously called together … separate and go their own ways again. Combining and
dispersing, combining and dispersing.
Now, while this constant flux, this constant change, may shake our sense of the continuity and solidity of our selves, our world, our universe, Malouf speaks of it as a miracle: All the grains that were miraculously called together at his birth to make just these hands …
3. Malouf’s version of Achilles
The Achilles of ancient Greek legend is a
great warrior, a man who was almost invulnerable. His mother, Thetis, was a
water goddess and had sought to make her young son, Achilles, immortal by
dipping him in the River Styx, the river that runs through the Underworld, and
that separates the living from the land of the dead.
Achilles was a ferocious and powerful fighter,
and his strength and skill were legendary – so much so, that his presence on
the battlefield was enough to undermine the confidence of his enemies. He is an all-but invincible warrior with only one vulnerable spot.
Malouf’s Achilles, however, is a man ‘divided’.
There is his warrior ‘self’:
‘The man is a fighter, but when he is not fighting, he is a farmer, earth is his element'. The earth is his father’s home; it is his
masculine nature. We see this ‘side’ of Achilles in his ruthlessness, in his
enjoyment of ‘the hunt’ [even as a boy, he loves hunting hares and killing
them] and in his ferocity in battle.
But there is another aspect to Achilles
that Malouf explores:
“But for the whole of his life he has been drawn, in
his other nature, to his mother’s element. To what, in all its many forms,
as ocean, pool, stream, is shifting and insubstantial. To what accepts, in a moment
of stillness, the reflection of a face, a tree in leaf, but holds nothing, and
itself cannot be held.
In the Star Wars movies, George Lucas writes of the ‘dark side’ of the Force, and throughout the series of films Luke Skywalker is forced to face both sides of the Force.
Achilles has two natures:
The fighter/ farmer/ earth-bound / solid / firm element in his nature, that derives from his father; and the shifting/ insubstantial/ spiritual/ constantly
changing / water-like/ eel-like element that derives from his mother.
This split in Achilles is also evident in the way Malouf handles other aspects of the story. When the goddess Iris comes to Priam, it is not in an earth-bound
/ solid / certain form. She comes in a vision, a dream perhaps – she is shifting/ insubstantial/ constantly changing / water-like / uncertain. Priam’s experience is not a solid, incontrovertible encounter. It is a spiritual encounter, no more substantial than an image that is caught, briefly, on the surface of the water . She comes in a moment of stillness, the reflection of a face.
Now all of this sounds very airy-fairy, I know. But it is not without some ‘solid’ ground. For the last 130 years, at least, starting with William James [a leading American psychologist], psychologists have suggested that e don’t have a self, but rather, multiple selves. They suggest that the reason human beings are so unpredictable in their behaviour is that we are not singular but plural – that several ‘people’ reside within us.
No comments:
Post a Comment