The best practice you can do for the SAC and for the exams later inthe year is to complete as many PRACTICE EXAM QUESTTIONS as you are able, and submit them to your group and to me for comment.
There are TEN Practice Essay topics below. Use these to sharpen your planning and writing skills. Set yourself a maximum of an hour to complete each practice essay. Spend up to TEN minutes generating ideas for your essay, and spend 50 minutes writing.
1. “Ransom is, first and foremost, a novel about redemption – about regaining what has been lost, about saving what has been endangered and retrieving what has been taken away.”
Discuss
2. In the final pages of Ransom, Malouf writes of Somax: ‘This old fellow, like other story tellers, is a stealer of other men’s tales, of other men’s lives.’
Discuss this idea in relation to Ransom.
3. “In the novel Ransom, the narrator tells us that Hector spoke to Achilles with his last breath; as men, both, for whom this moment was sacred; a meeting that from the beginning had been the clear goal of their lives and the final achievement of what they were.”
Discuss
4. “War is never about glory or honour or destiny – although Achilles and Hector thought it was. But there is no glory in war – only the loss of our humanity.”
Discuss
5. “In the novel Ransom, there are many stories that tell of salvation – stories that explore the idea of people being saved. Patroclus is saved from the consequences of his actions; Priam’s life is saved by his sister; Hector’s body is ransomed by Priam ... and many more.”
What do these stories have to teach us about being human?
6. Achilles, Priam, Somax – all three recover their humanity through their actions.
Discuss
7. In Homer’s Iliad, on which Ransom is based, there is no character called Somax. Somax is a creation of Malouf’s imagination. Why did Malouf choose to make such a major change to the original story? What is Somax’s significance to the novel?
8. Towards the end of Part 1 of Ransom, Malouf writes that Achilles is waiting for a break. For something to appear that will break the spell that is on him, the self-consuming rage that drives him and wastes his spirit in despair... day after day, he rages , shames himself, calls silently on a spirit that does not answer, and sleeps.
How is this spell broken? In what sense is Achilles woken?
9. “Priam realises that the gods are perhaps not solely responsible for the actions of men, and that realisation opens up a space for human action, for humans to control their own destinies.”
Discuss
10. “Achilles is not one person, but two. But for a time one part of his dual nature is suppressed. It is only when Priam comes to him that he is able to allow the suppressed part of himself to re-emerge. And in doing so, he becomes human again.”
Discuss.
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