Wife of Priam and mother of Hector, Hecuba gives full voice to the horrors of war. As
she stands on the walls of Troy and watches her son’s death and the spectacle of his
desecration, Hecuba becomes the very figure of the witness to the worst excesses of
the dark aspects of human nature, seeing in Achilles a figure capable of mindless
atrocities and boundless savagery. Hecuba represents a singularly female voice in a
narrative otherwise dominated by the voices of men; she is the figure anticipating the
later enslavement of the Trojan women which became another central preoccupation
of classical tragedy. Hecuba gives one of the most affecting and dramatic speeches
in the novel when she recounts her memories of the birth of her sons, now killed in
battle defending the city: ‘It is my flesh being tumbled on the stones out there. Seven
times now I’ve grieved for a son lost in this war. And what I remember of each one is
how they kicked their little heels under my heart — here, just here — and the first cry
they gave when I yielded them up to the world, and the first steps they took’. (p.52)
Ransom is easily taken as a novel principally concerned with the relationships
between fathers and sons, and the introduction of this strongly resonant maternal
note is a useful balance to the otherwise exclusively masculine tenor of the writing.
The other members of the Trojan court, Priam’s remaining sons and daughters —
Deiphobus, Cassandra, Helenus, Panyamus and Polydorus and advisors such as
Polydamus — all receive the news of Priam’s intentions with alarm and foreboding,
ultimately yielding to the will of their father and king. Malouf sketches these
characters with a sense of the ultimate fate that hangs over them, while they cling to
the rituals and protocols of the royal court. As a group these characters symbolise
the impending tragedy of the fall of Troy, the enslavement of the women, the sack of
the city, the dispersal of the people. They come before the reader of Ransom as the
last vestige of an ancient culture on the verge of disappearing, like their city, into the
oblivion of the past.
she stands on the walls of Troy and watches her son’s death and the spectacle of his
desecration, Hecuba becomes the very figure of the witness to the worst excesses of
the dark aspects of human nature, seeing in Achilles a figure capable of mindless
atrocities and boundless savagery. Hecuba represents a singularly female voice in a
narrative otherwise dominated by the voices of men; she is the figure anticipating the
later enslavement of the Trojan women which became another central preoccupation
of classical tragedy. Hecuba gives one of the most affecting and dramatic speeches
in the novel when she recounts her memories of the birth of her sons, now killed in
battle defending the city: ‘It is my flesh being tumbled on the stones out there. Seven
times now I’ve grieved for a son lost in this war. And what I remember of each one is
how they kicked their little heels under my heart — here, just here — and the first cry
they gave when I yielded them up to the world, and the first steps they took’. (p.52)
Ransom is easily taken as a novel principally concerned with the relationships
between fathers and sons, and the introduction of this strongly resonant maternal
note is a useful balance to the otherwise exclusively masculine tenor of the writing.
The other members of the Trojan court, Priam’s remaining sons and daughters —
Deiphobus, Cassandra, Helenus, Panyamus and Polydorus and advisors such as
Polydamus — all receive the news of Priam’s intentions with alarm and foreboding,
ultimately yielding to the will of their father and king. Malouf sketches these
characters with a sense of the ultimate fate that hangs over them, while they cling to
the rituals and protocols of the royal court. As a group these characters symbolise
the impending tragedy of the fall of Troy, the enslavement of the women, the sack of
the city, the dispersal of the people. They come before the reader of Ransom as the
last vestige of an ancient culture on the verge of disappearing, like their city, into the
oblivion of the past.
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