20. RANSOM EXAM/SAC QUESTIONS

The following questions are examples of the kinds of questions asked in the Year 12 English examination and on Year 12 SACs in relation to the novel RANSOM.
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.

19. REALITY is the WORLD as we SEE it.... or is it?

We look "OUT" onto the world through our eyes, and SEE the world AS IT IS.
At least, that's what we mostly think.

But is this true?
There are TWO ways (at least) of "SEEING" this person. Some people can move easily between one view and the alternative view.

What do YOU see?

18. Student query about RANSOM

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

17. Who is the REAL you? Are YOU real?

This is a really intresting video clip. It involves a philosopher talking about the concept of SELF.

http://www.youtubesnips.com/watch?v=GFIyhseYTWg

16. RANSOM: "Pages 60-80 have me stumped"

EMAIL: Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2012 Subject: RE: VCE ENGLISH 2012

hi Barry

I'm up to page 80 and the last 20 pages have stumped me, is it just Priam talking to Hecuba the whole time about how he wants to get hectors body back?

A

Hi A,
Sorry I didn't get back to you yesterday - we arrived home from our week's hol down at Blairgowrie late in the afternoon, and I was a bit tired so took it easy last night.

Now - to the 20 pages that have you stumped.
Priam has:
a vision ?
an encounter with the goddess Iris?
a dream?
a hynogogic experience?
a moment of insight while in the disoriented space between sleeping and waking?
has an intuition?
[I think Malouf suggests all of these as possibilities, but settles on no single one as explanation, so as readers we are uncertain as to EXACTLY what has happened. But we do know it was a powerful experience, one that leads to clarity in Priam's mind.]

And Priam comes to a clarity about what he must do - an intuition. So he goes to his wife, Hecuba, to tell her.
The 'solution' is: He must strip himself of the trappings of his 'ceremonial self' - Priam as king. He must go to Achilles, not as a king, not in pomp and circumstance, not with all the implied power of a king, but as a man reduced to his bare essentials ... a man who is a father, nothing more, to beg the return of his son's body.

[Perhaps part of his intuition is that ALL men - all people - "wear" ceremonial robes, that all play out ROLES, and that BEHIND/ BENEATH/set apart from that ceremonial/OUTWARD self, there is an inward self. And that INWARD self is something we ALL share - even the great Achilles, the great warrior, the great jackal!]

Hecuba objects. "He will just murder you". [She refers to Achilles as a jackal - that most ignoble of creature, a creature with no mercy, no gentleness - a creature that tears away at the flesh of the dead, that survives on and by death and mutilation].
She sees Achilles as inhuman, a jackal, with no "human" core.

IMPORTANT: This distinction between "ceremonial self" (or outer self or persona) and the "inward self" is a key concept. Go back to the very opening, and we see it there - in Achilles two selves : the father/human farmer/warrior self that takes over when he is a boy of 6, and the 'eel-like"/ watery/ mother self that has been hidden for so long.

Malouf is touching here upon an important idea that psychology has been exploring too - the notions of MULTIPLE SELVES, and of the CHILD SELF as ONE of these selves.

Priam seeks to convince Hecuba that the ACTION he plans is the ONLY way - that only through a ransom of himself can he regain the dead body of his son.

He then tells Hecuba the story of his own life - and of how he 'lost' his child-self. The story concerns the mighty Hercules, half man/ half god. Priam has not always been Priam. He was once Podarces, son of a king. A child of around 6 [a parallel with Achilles]. His father's kingdom was under attack from Hercules. To protect the young boy, Podarces father had hidden him among the peasant children - living in squalor in the village. The war goes badly for Podarces (Priam's) father; Hercules is victorious.

Hercules wants to find the prince.
[It was common in those times to kill off the whole family of a king, so tehre would be no "rightful heir" to the throne. Even in the 20th century, this practice was still happening. When the Communists took over in Russia, the Tsar and his whole family were executed. The hanging of Saddam Hussein and the killing of most of his sons is perhaps another example.]

Priam tells Hecuba the story again ... of how Hercules told Podarces young sister that he would spare whoever the girl chose. This of course could have been a trick. Hercules could easily have been tricking her into disclosing where Podarces was. That is certainly what the young Podarces FEARED was the case.

But Hercules spared the child that the girl identified. He gave Podarces a new name - PRIAM - a word that means "ransom".


I hope that that makes that section of the book a little clearer.

I can't believe that we have only 11 days left till classes start.
Have a great last few days of break.

Regards

Barry

15. RANSOM: Section 5

The final section of the novel describes Priam’s return to Troy and the successful
completion of his mission, though there is nothing triumphal about this moment. In
the closing pages Malouf evokes a vision of the fall of the city, the destruction of its
culture and the dispersal of its people. In the most violent scene in the novel, the
death of Priam at the clumsy hands of Neoptolemus is portrayed as the ultimate
instance of the ugly horror of war, its brutalising logic and destructive inevitability.
Malouf provides brief images of the fall of a great city and the enslavement of its
people, a vision of Troy itself through the portents of its final transformation: ‘Off in
the distance, the hills towards Troy are just beginning to develop shadows on their
sides: their crests are already touched with gold’. (p.207)

This theme of transformation is continued in the final section with the character of
Priam; who through transforming back into an ordinary man, a father of a murdered
son, has also become a figure of legend, the protagonist of future narratives that will
recount his journey to the camp of the Greeks and his courage in facing the fearful
Achilles to ask for the slain body of his son: ‘Look, he wants to shout, I am still here,
but the I is different. I come as a man of sorrow bringing the body of my son for
burial, but I come also as a hero of the deed that till now was never attempted’. (p.209)

Priam has transformed himself from a king into a man and hence into a hero of mythic stature through story. Priam returns to Troy and feels his homecoming now as a state of ‘exultant well being’. This state is short lived in the novel as the focus immediately shifts to Achilles’ vision of the son’s murder of Priam, a symbolic act of patricide in which Achilles
experiences the eternal shame of its violence and absence of dignity: ‘And for him
the misery of this moment will last forever; that is the hard fact he must live with.
However the story is told and elaborated, the raw shame of it will be with now till his
last breathe’. (p.214) The central human importance of story becomes the novel’s
final image with the figure of Somax under the misshapen sycamore recounting the
stories of the fall of Troy and that image prefiguring the central role of all storytellers in human culture, of Homer himself and epic poems such as the Iliad.

14. RANSOM Section 4

With the assistance of Hermes, Priam and Somax enter the Greek camp unhindered.
Priam is ushered into the mess hut where Achilles has been sitting in the isolation of
his grief. Achilles feels the presence of Hermes and immediately becomes sensitive
to a transformation of being (‘He has moved into his mother’s element’). He
experiences a vision, at first mistaking Priam for the ghost of Patroclus, and then
more profoundly for his own father Peleus (‘Father?’); thus transporting Achilles back
in time to a clear vision of his father who he has not seen in nine years, the same
amount of time he has not seen his own son Neoptolemus. This is a telling moment
of misrecognition, in which Priam comes to stand for the figure of all grieving fathers,
Achilles included, who experiences the deep sensations of a son’s yearning for his
father, his double sense of loss, embodied now by the father of the man he has killed
and refused an honourable burial.

As he has planned, Priam addresses Achilles in plain language, something he has
been assisted in by hearing the earlier stories of Somax. Priam’s appeal addresses
Achilles as both a son and a father, evoking the inevitable mortality that sees time
pass in the natural ebb and flow of generations between fathers and sons. Achilles is
moved by Priam’s request (‘Beyond this old man who claims ... to be Priam, King of
Troy, hovers the figure of his father, which is too immediate in Achilles’ mind, too
disturbing, to be pushed aside’), and perhaps due to what he experiences as the
‘dreamlike quality’ of the moment, in which he ‘feels immobilised and outside time’,
accedes to Priam’s wishes. Achilles is, however, also overcome by another vision,
this time an apocalyptic one in which he sees the death of Priam at the hands of his
own son Neoptolemus — a revelation that also contributes to his ultimate act of
mercy and expiation of his own grief and guilt.

Achilles makes plans for the transfer of Hector’s body and watches entranced as a
group of women wash and prepare it for the journey back to Troy. The description of
this transfer has clear signs of Achilles anticipating his own death and the shared
fate that joins him to Hector. Priam leaves Achilles’ camp with a new sense of
wonder at the reality of the man, not the fearsome figure of the vengeful warrior,
intuiting that there is an understanding to be gained of his enemy that might avert the
fate of his people and city. Achilles farewells Priam with an offer of help at the
moment when the walls of Troy will inevitably fall. Priam answers with a fateful
caution of Achilles’ own impending death.