Language, Storytelling, and Empathy Theme Analysis

In the Afterword to Ransom, Malouf says that he considers the novel to be, at heart, about storytelling. Given that the novel is a reworking of a preexisting story—told most famously in The Iliad—this is not surprising. Still, it is striking just how often Malouf interrupts the main narrative to tell a story-within-a-story. These interludes serve different purposes over the course of the novel, from offering necessary backstory to providing entertainment. Most importantly, however, they provide a contrast to the rigid and formal language of the Trojan royal court. Whereas the stylized speech of the court tends to bind people more tightly to a set role in life, storytelling encourages them to look beyond the boundaries of self, space, and time.

Broadly speaking, Ransom deals with two types of language: ceremonial and narrative. As King of Troy, Priam is used to the former—highly stylized arguments, speeches, and exchanges that follow rigid formulas. This kind of language typically serves a set purpose, which is one reason why Hecuba reacts with such alarm when Priam begins to question the limits of fate: she is used to thinking of words as “agents” that act in specific and powerful ways, so she fears that Priam will unleash chaos simply by talking about chance. In fact, the language used in the Trojan court is actually designed to limit chance by maintain a particular social order. Within this world of the court, words and even people have established symbolic meanings, so the act of speaking tends to reinforce a person’s status, his formal relationship to others, etc. For Priam, even remaining silent is a way of shoring up his position as a king: “Silence…was expressive. Power lay in containment.”

When Priam ventures out beyond his palace, however, he begins to notice a different kind of language—one associated with narrative. The stories his carter Somax tells about his daughter-in-law, granddaughter, and sons are not “important” in the sense of serving a particular function or conveying a particular meaning (in fact, Priam associates Somax’s speech with the meaningless “prattle” of water, wind, and animals). With that said, Priam quickly discovers that he enjoys Somax’s stories, and draws a distinction between importance and “interest,” implying that storytelling can be a pleasurable way of passing the time if nothing else. 

Ultimately, however, Ransom suggests that storytelling does serve a purpose besides enjoyment. More specifically, narrative offers Ransom’s characters what Priam calls a “crack in the door” through which they can access other people’s worlds. Narrative language, whether in a spoken story or a novel, thrives on the specific, sensory details that symbolic language considers "unnecessary." As a result, listening to stories is a very physical experience in Ransom. When Priam eats the griddlecakes, for instance, he feels that he can taste the deft motions Somax has described his daughter-in-law using to flip them. Even more strikingly, Achilles seems to experience in real time events he never witnessed simply by hearing the story of how Patroclus came to be in exile: “Achilles too stands spellbound. Like a sleeper who has stumbled in on another’s dream, he sees what is about to happen but can neither move nor cry out to prevent it…The blow is about to come.”

On a basic level, then, Ransom depicts storytelling as a way of fostering empathy. It does this, however, not simply by pointing out that stories provide insight into other people’s thoughts and feelings, but by suggesting that stories literally allow people to transcend their own identities and lives, which are otherwise limited by everything from social position to mortality. When Priam presents his “story” to Achilles, for instance, Achilles imagines himself as an old man, and thus experiences a version of himself that will never exist in reality (as he his fated to die young, and knows that this is his fate). Achilles, the, can only ever know himself as an old man through the empathy and imaginative connection created by storytelling. In this way, storytelling also intersects with the theme of chance—through narrative, Malouf suggests, humans can experience what could be but isn’t, including who they could be if they were not themselves.