Priam Is Simply a Man

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David Malouf’s novel Ransom follows the journey of Kings Priam as he sets out to discover what it means to be a man. There is no doubt that Priam begins the novel with a broken connection with his sons and wife. His role as king has left him not knowing what it means to be a farther. It is only when he loses his first son Hector to the blade of Achilles that a desire to regain this lost connection is invoked within Priam. He sets out on a journey with a simple goal, to bring home the body of his son and in the process discover what it means to be a man. King Priam sits within the four walls of Troy ravaged with grief for the loss of his son Hector. But his grief is not that of a farther but a king who has lost the air to his thrown. His people are left with no hope and it is this fact that he mourns for most. “The grief that racks him... is also for a kingdom ravaged and threatened with extinction.” Priam is far from what you could call a man. He has servants to do his every deed, has a herald “to find words for me”. “My role was to hold myself apart in ceremonial stillness and let others be my arm, my fist-my breath too when talk was needed.” Priam’s role as king has meant that he has lost a connection with what it means to be ordinary. He tells the tale to Somax of a boar hunt, normally a highly masculine thing to do, where his ‘attendants’ each have their “particular role to perform in the ceremonial play.” His role was symbolic and he could have no part in the ‘merely physical business.’ All masculine attributes of hunting have been removed by having others around him do the hard work. Even his relationship with his sons was “formal and symbolic.” “The truth was that none of his sons was in that sense particular…. He could not even be sure of their actual number.” It is obvious that in his role as king, Priam has no conception of what it takes to be a man. It is
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