2. Ransom quotes

Question 1

‘this plan of

Answer 1

yours is not only new and unheard of … it also exposes to insult … your royal image’ (identity, change)

Question 2

‘Ordinary desires and

Answer 2

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)

Question 3

‘It is true that

Answer 3

the gods made me a king, but they also made me a man, and mortal.’ -Priam to his son (identity, humanity)

Question 4

‘One of the chief

Answer 4

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)

Question 5

‘his heart softened

Answer 5

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

Question 6

‘We’re children of

Answer 6

nature my lord. Of the earth, as well as of the gods.’ -Somax tries to get Priam to eat some food by the stream

Question 7

‘Part of a world

Answer 7

of ceremony, of high play that was eternal and had nothing to do with the actual and immediate’ -Priam’s royal sphere

Question 8

‘The realm of

Answer 8

the royal was representational, ideal. Everything that was merely accidental … was to be ignored’ -Priam discovers a world outside his royal sphere

Question 9

‘Silence, not speech,

Answer 9

was what was expressive. Power lay in containment.’ -Priam has been taught not to express his emotions

Question 10

‘What he had to

Answer 10

say … was of no importance. It was full of something else. Interest.’ -Priam becomes curious about Somax’s world (his journey of self-discovery)

Question 11

‘It was as

Answer 11

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

Question 12

‘we don’t just

Answer 12

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

Question 13

‘The worst happens,

Answer 13

and there, it’s done. The fleas go on biting. The sun comes up again.’ -Despite grief and loss the world moves on

Question 14

‘all that was so

Answer 14

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

Question 15

‘Their relationship to

Answer 15

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

Question 16

‘I felt like

Answer 16

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

Question 17

‘It is nine

Answer 17

years since Achilles last saw his father.’ -Achilles mistakes Priam for his father

Question 18

‘to ask you,

Answer 18

man to man, as a father, for the body of my son. To ransom and bring him home.’ -Priam appeals Achilles

Question 19

‘The body of

Answer 19

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

Question 20

‘To stand … undefended

Answer 20

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

Question 21

‘it does high

Answer 21

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.’

Question 22

‘We are mortals,

Answer 22

not gods. We die. Death is in our nature … And for that reason, if for no other, we should pity one another’s losses.’

Question 23

‘Some cleansing emotion

Answer 23

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

Question 24

‘It is only provisional

Answer 24

triumph, of course; the gods are not to be trusted they tilt the balance momentarily in your favour.’ -Chance