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Ransom (2009) by Australian novelist David Malouf is based on an episode from Homer’s Iliad and highlights the meeting between Achilles a demigod and Priam the king of Troy during the Trojan war. The novel explores themes of identity, fate, and mortality. Comparably, the film Atonement directed by Joe Wright (2007) is about a young girl who makes a grave mistake that changes her life as well as the people around her forever. The film also explores the themes of fate, chance, and perspective. The film and novel have both similarities and differences, however, Priam and Briony understand that the past cannot be altered but try to change their future.
Priam during his quest to Achilles comes to the realization that he hasn’t been the best parent, and lacks that human connection that Somax has with his children. As Somax talks about his daughter’s dance, despite that Priam cannot mention a thing of this nature about his children and that saddens him. However, he is determined to retrieve the body of his beloved son and give him the afterlife he deserves as a way to atone for his sins. Moreover, in Atonement Briony tries to atone for her past sins of falsely accusing Robbie of rape by becoming a nurse during the war. This allows her to close off and erases her life turning her from Briony Tallis into Nurse Tallis.
In Malouf’s Ransom Priam’s decision to change who he is and how he is remembered. From just another king to a hero who went to extraordinary lengths to fetch his child. Priam isn’t swayed by his son’s concerns and believes that his being a father and trying to retrieve his son’s dead body isn’t something that tarnishes a legacy. If anything the legacy he wants to leave behind is that of a King ‘who can go humbly, as a father and as a man, to his son’s killer, and ask in the gods’ name, and in their sight, to be given back the body of his dead son. This shows that change is within reach but it won’t alter the past just the future. On the other hand, Briony attempts to change however it’s just in her imagination as she envisions a scene in which she says “I’m sorry for the distress I’ve caused you” to Robbie and Cecilia but that’s all it was a vision that doesn’t change the past or the distress she’s caused.
Towards the end of Ransom Priam realizes his fate and the fate of his city and says “In the end, what we come to is what time, with every heartbeat and in every moment of our lives, has been slowly working towards the death we have been carrying in us from the very beginning, from our first breath.” This universal and inevitable idea is indeed the kind of destiny at play in the novel. Nonetheless in Atonement Briony in her own way tries to give Robbie and Cecilia the life and happiness she robbed of them in her novel through her own imagination. “So in the book, I wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia what they lost out on in life. I’d like to think this isn’t weakness or… evasion… but a final act of kindness. I gave them their happiness.” This novel she wrote made Briony understand the gravity of the mistake she made as a child that she could never change and helped her come to terms with it.
In summary, Priam and Briony understood that the past cannot be changed however they could shape their own futures.
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