Duty, Honor, and Loyalty Theme Analysis

The characters in the Ramayana place a great deal of importance on honor, loyalty, and behaving dutifully to their family members. Honor and loyalty control every character in the story, humans as well as the demons and the gods. Even though honoring one's promises and behaving loyally often has disastrous short-term consequences for the characters, they overwhelmingly choose to follow through with their promises, which later result in long-term success. This suggests that though behaving loyally or honorably may be difficult or unappealing initially, it's entirely necessary for future happiness.

First, it's important to note that the importance placed on loyalty and duty works in the logic of the story and in Hindu society because of a widespread belief in fate and destiny. Essentially, if someone violates a promise or refuses to grant a promised boon, the cosmic order of society will be catastrophically interrupted. On the other hand, following through with one's promises allows a person to actually follow the cosmic order, even if it doesn't make logical sense at the time.

As the protagonist of the story and the ideal hero, Rama is intensely loyal and honorable—at times, nearly to a fault. He acts as a model citizen, demonstrating for other characters as well as readers or listeners the importance of behaving honorably, loyally, and remaining dutiful to one's family. When King Dasaratha is forced to send Rama into exile to fulfill an earlier promise he made to his wife Kaikeyi, Rama refuses the pleadings of his family members and advisors to stay and obey the desires of his father's heart, rather than his father's words. The gods watch these discussions closely, worried that Rama will interrupt his fate by allowing himself to be crowned. When Rama insists on honoring his father's words, he insures three things: that his father upholds his promise to Kaikeyi; that Rama himself behaves obediently to his father; and that he will be able to go on and fulfill his destiny of destroying the rakshasa demons. This choice also means that when Rama does return, his rule will be legitimate.

Even though upholding one's promises is of the utmost importance to the characters in the Ramayana, the characters also look for ways to use loopholes and technicalities to orchestrate events and behave in a way they believe to be correct. This is practiced by mortals and gods alike, and shows that though the gods might control fate, they can't always insure that their actions or promises will lead to good. For example, Ravana, the story's villain, becomes extremely powerful because he was initially decent and virtuous, and the gods agreed to reward him for his virtue. Ravana's resulting power corrupted him and led him to use his power to subjugate the gods who pledged protection to him. This in turn leads the gods to concoct the plan for Vishnu to be born as Rama, as it allows them to utilize the fact that Ravana never asked a human for protection. Other gods incarnate as monkeys, since Ravana is cursed to expect his downfall from a monkey. By doing this, the gods are able to technically keep their promises to Ravana while simultaneously removing him from power. Bharatha, Rama's brother, engages in a similar thought process when Rama insists that he follow Dasaratha's wishes that he stay in Ayodhya to rule. While Bharatha technically follows his father's wishes, in actuality he rules as a regent from outside the city and waits for Rama's return. These situations show that though ideas of duty, honor, and loyalty are extremely important for society to function at all levels, individuals can still exert some control over their lives and fates by working within the confines of these expectations.