The Epic and the Everyday Theme Analysis

Epic literature varies from culture to culture, but one core feature of the genre is its concern with people and situations that exist outside the bounds of normal human experience. The Iliad, for instance, deals with an epic event (the Trojan War) and is populated by characters who are either gods, demigods (e.g. Achilles), or royalty with abilities that verge on superhuman (e.g. Hector, Odysseus). Ransom, of course, takes its plot from the final book of the The Iliad and generally adheres closely to Homer’s version of the story. In terms of tone, however, the two works are strikingly different, in part because Malouf introduces elements (e.g. the carter Somax) that belong to the realm of ordinary, unheroic life. In the end, these differences not only mark a shift in genre (from epic poetry to novel), but also constitute a claim about what makes human life worthwhile.

As the novel opens, both Achilles and Priam clearly belong to the world of epic literature: Priam is a king, while Achilles is a demigod conventionally held to be the greatest warrior to take part in the Trojan War. Both men, moreover, possess the ability to communicate with the gods and see into the future. Interestingly, however, Ransom downplays the grandeur of its protagonists’ capabilities. Priam, for instance, sees his visions as simply one more “aspect of daily being,” and Achilles (as a boy) viewed his ability to straddle humanity and divinity as “natural.” This normalization of unusual traits and experiences points to Ransom’s skepticism of the lofty world of epic literature. The royal sphere that Priam inhabits, for example, is in many ways a stifling one, because it limits his ability to express or even experience ordinary emotions. In some ways, this process is even dehumanizing: Priam must always exist as a “ceremonial figurehead” rather than as a living and breathing person.

Not surprisingly, then, part of what appeals to Priam about approaching Achilles with ransom is the opportunity to stop acting like a king and begin acting like an ordinary man and father. Over the course of his journey with Somax, however, Priam discovers that everyday life holds many pleasures over and apart from the pleasure of being “merely” human: the sensation of wading in cool water, the sounds of birds flying overhead, and all the other details of his surroundings that are “just themselves” rather than symbols of a grander world. In fact, the entire midsection of the novel functions as a defense of the ordinary, since it disrupts the main storyline involving Priam and Achilles to focus on the thoughts and feelings of a lower-class carter who is not particularly strong, brave, wise, etc.

Perhaps the most telling indication of the novel’s stance on the epic vs. the everyday comes in its final pages. Instead of ending with Priam or Achilles, Ransom closes with a lengthy description of Somax’s life as an old man, by which point no one believes his stories about the role he played in the Trojan War. On the face of it, this might seem to undercut the seriousness of the novel’s central episode: Priam’s meeting with Achilles. In terms of personal development, however, the function of this meeting was to free both men from the constraints of being archetypical characters in an epic story, and to allow them to be ordinary humans who are complex and imperfect. By ending with Somax and Beauty—a common, albeit pretty, mule—Malouf prioritizes everyday life in all its confusion and pleasure.