Ransom: Essays on chance

[DisaFear]

I am stuck on Chance essays

I have one paragraph that is solid, however, my teacher suggested this

With the chance essay you have a good intro and first body para, although I think you need to expand that para with more evidence. You can talk about the awareness that Achilles and Priam both seem to have that they are characters in stories that are told, something that fixes them into their roles, but they yearn to break free of these fixed roles, and that is where the element of chance comes in.

Can someone give me an example, quote, or something, that can help me with this?

For other paragraphs, he suggested these

You can talk about Somax as the agent for introducing the elements of chance to Priam, an ordinary man who is less constrained by his role than Priam is, who shows him a natural world that is less regimented and fixed in place.

You can also take about Priam's awareness that his life could have been otherwise, if Hesione had not rescued him as a child when Heracles sacked Troy. The way he still carries this awareness of different possibilities within himself.

I do not know what to write for the Hesione bit, as in, I can't write enough. Does anyone have any pointers?

[mattshen]

okay so what i think you/our teacher means by this is that Priam and Achilles both fixed in their roles of being the a king, 'a ceremonial figurehead that may just as well be of stone or wood', and Achilles being remembered as the 'most boldest, most ferocious and most unpredictable of the Greeks' as well as both knowing their fates; (Priam knows he is going to be 'shamelessly stripped and humiliated'.  However, they do not want to be, particularly Priam, remembered by these images, and hence in taking a chance, Achilles 'breaks free from the obligation of always being the hero' as Priam 'is always expected to be a king'.

With the Hesione part, you talk about how Priam has had the 'foul slave smell that he cannot rub off' on him, where he has experienced where 'no matter how much we scrub ourselves' he can never forget. It is this experience that haunts Priam, and prompts him to carry out this moral act of heroism, because he knows that if he himself wasn't ransomed, he would have gone down that 'other path'. Because he knows it was a 'mockery intended' by the Gods, to 'show him what is was in their power to do', he feels affronted that he is to them an 'ancient doll', so in taking this chance, he breaks free from the restraints of the gods, and 'lets the real man inside' be brought forth.
Hope i helped

[DisaFear]

Pro tier advice there, thanks

[tullfrog]

This was probably in your opening paragraph, but you are mentioning Isis right? She will play an integral role in ANY discussion of chance.

[DisaFear]

No, unfortunately, I did not. First para was just about Achilles/Priam/Fate/Role stuff
How would you integrate Isis into your essay?

I handed in the essay last night though

[tullfrog]

Isis is the goddess who first posits the idea of chance to Priam! It's only through divine revelation that his iconoclasm comes about!!