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Foreshadowing
Genre
Explanation and Analysis:
Ransom is a novel that expands upon Books 22 through 24 of The Iliad, an epic poem written in ancient Greek. The Iliad is traditionally attributed to the blind poet Homer, who most likely composed it as part of an oral literary tradition, which is partially why it was written in meter (specifically, dactylic hexameter). Despite the metrical form of The Iliad (and Malouf’s poetic and lyrical writing style), Ransom is a work of prose. In a further departure from its source, Ransom would not be considered an epic in the traditional sense: the novel centers the interiority of ordinary, unheroic life rather than the splendor of great battles characteristic of epic literature.
In addition, Ransom may be considered a work of historical fiction, even if it's not necessarily widely agreed upon that the Trojan War actually took place. After all, the events of the novel occur in the distant past—the Bronze Age in particular—in the legendary city of ancient Troy (which most scholars agree did, indeed, exist). But importantly, the characters, places, and events in Ransom, while central to the ancient Greek pre-literary and literary traditions (and often represented in similar works as historical) are fictionalized.
