The royal court, including his wife Hecuba, are horrified, but he will not be swayed. Somax takes Priam on a carriage to go find his son Hector. Priam wants to see his son one last time so he makes a plan to get to him. In the book, Ransom, by David Malouf, Hector kills Achilles’ friend, Patroclus, so Achilles kills Hector. King Priam determines to approach his enemy Achilles as an ordinary man and father, to offer him a ransom of gold in return for his son’s body. Ransom By David Malouf Analysis while grief can also change one for the better. Even killing the killer was not vengeance enough: he now desecrates the corpse of Trojan prince Hector daily, dragging it behind his chariot in a shameful fit of rage and pain. BRIEF SYNOPSIS Achilles is inconsolable over the death of his companion Patroclus in battle. It reminds us why story-telling (and retelling) is so important in preserving our histories, explaining and enriching our own lives and experiences, foretelling our futures. In the Afterword to Ransom, Malouf says that he considers the novel to be, at heart, about storytelling. Malouf’s novel Ransom takes up and shakes up an old epic tale of the clashing battles we fight both in the world and inside our own heads. The Epic and the Everyday Themes and Colors LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Ransom, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.

Stories always beget stories, changing over time to reach out to new audiences. Insight text article on Ransom Article by Dr Kim Edwards Ransom By David Malouf INTRODUCTION Why do some stories endure? What is it about some tales that fires our imaginations, haunts our dreams, and colours our own lives so much we can’t stop thinking, talking and writing about them? For Australian novelist David Malouf, it was the way in which an ancient myth of battle and fallen heroes connected with his own personal experience of growing up during wartime – this inspired him to respond to and retrace the legendary story of Troy with his own visions and revisions.

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