2. Ransom quotes Flashcards
‘this plan of
yours is not only new and unheard of … it also exposes to insult … your royal image’ (identity, change)
‘Ordinary desires and
needs and feelings are not unknown to you … but you have, you can have, in your kingly role, no part in them – they are not in your royal sphere.’ -Priam’s son pleads with Priam to reconsider his plan (identity, humanity, change)
‘It is true that
the gods made me a king, but they also made me a man, and mortal.’ -Priam to his son (identity, humanity)
‘One of the chief
concerns of a good king is the image he presents, and most of all, as he grows older, the image that other men will keep of him when he is gone.’ -Priam wishes to be an inspiration to others (identity, change)
‘his heart softened
by fellow-feeling, since he too was a father’ -Referring to Somax when Priam imagines that his son’s body is already in the cart
‘We’re children of
nature my lord. Of the earth, as well as of the gods.’ -Somax tries to get Priam to eat some food by the stream
‘Part of a world
of ceremony, of high play that was eternal and had nothing to do with the actual and immediate’ -Priam’s royal sphere
‘The realm of
the royal was representational, ideal. Everything that was merely accidental … was to be ignored’ -Priam discovers a world outside his royal sphere
‘Silence, not speech,
was what was expressive. Power lay in containment.’ -Priam has been taught not to express his emotions
‘What he had to
say … was of no importance. It was full of something else. Interest.’ -Priam becomes curious about Somax’s world (his journey of self-discovery)
‘It was as
if you found yourself peering through the crack in door … and saw clearly for a moment into the fellow’s life, his world’ -The power of storytelling
‘we don’t just
lie down and die, do we, sir? We go on. For all our losses.’ -Somax teaches Priam how to move on from grief and loss
‘The worst happens,
and there, it’s done. The fleas go on biting. The sun comes up again.’ -Despite grief and loss the world moves on
‘all that was so
personal … that Priam wondered if the phrase he had taken up so easily, that he knew what it was to lose a son, really did mean the same for him as it did for the driver.’ -Priam’s loss is more symbolic than intimate
‘Their relationship to
to him was formal and symbolic, part of that dreamlike play before the gods and in the world’s eye’ -Priam’s loss is more symbolic than intimate
‘I felt like
punching her where she stood. But what would have been the good of that? That wouldn’t have brought him back.’ -Revenge is not the solution to loss
‘It is nine
years since Achilles last saw his father.’ -Achilles mistakes Priam for his father
‘to ask you,
man to man, as a father, for the body of my son. To ransom and bring him home.’ -Priam appeals Achilles
‘The body of
of a son for whom you have a father’s soft affections, to whom you owe sacred duties that nothing, nothing in the world, can cancel.’ -Priam appeals to Achilles as a father
‘To stand … undefended
before you, and with no sign about me of my royal dignity … as a father, and as one poor mortal to another’ -Priam humbles himself before his son’s killer
‘it does high
honour to both of us to act as our fathers and forefathers have done through all the ages and show that we are men, children of the gods, not ravening beasts.’
‘We are mortals,
not gods. We die. Death is in our nature … And for that reason, if for no other, we should pity one another’s losses.’
‘Some cleansing emotion
that flooded through him … has cleared his heart of the smoky poison that clogged and thickened its every motion so that whatever he turned his gaze on was clouded and dark.’ -Achilles is able to move on from his grief
‘It is only provisional
triumph, of course; the gods are not to be trusted they tilt the balance momentarily in your favour.’ -Chance
