57 pages • 1 hour read
Lew WallaceBen-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1880A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Pleasure and Its Ultimate Emptiness
Ben-Hur is frequently tempted by opportunities to take a life of ease and pleasure and forget the hard road of taking vengeance, restoring his family and its fortunes, and aiding the Messiah. Once he has been redeemed from slavery by Arrius and made the Roman’s heir, Ben-Hur has the opportunity to simply enjoy Arrius’s estate in Italy and the fortune that has been left to him but chooses to return to the East.
Likewise, when he comes to Antioch, Ben-Hur hears of the marvelous Grove of Daphne said to be a place so wonderful that some visitors never leave. Out of curiosity, he goes to the Grove and sees that it is indeed a wondrous place filled with delight in which the worries of the world may be forgotten. He is so affected by the atmosphere of the Grove that he considers living there but pulls back and leaves with his faith intact, deciding that the residents are “of the sybarites of the world” (156).
Iras, who asks Ben-Hur to call her “Egypt,” is the personification of the theme of The “East” and Orientalism, highlighting the Western notion of the East’s extreme sensuousness and spiritual lifelessness. Her every affectation is calculated to cultivate Ben-Hur’s interest in her, seeking to attract him to her with the promise of shared pleasure. Once Ben-Hur has discovered her purposes, however, he realizes that there was no substance to his attraction; it was based entirely on lust and her appeals to his vanity. Ultimately, Ben-Hur marries Esther, the dutiful, pious, unassuming daughter of Simonides—a clear rejection of what Iras offered him.
Faithful Duty
The duty to serve one’s superiors faithfully is a recurring motif in the novel. Esther personifies this motif by how she diligently waits upon her father who has physical disabilities from being tortured by the Romans. Ben-Hur’s duty to his own family—to rescue them if possible—serves as his primary motivation and keeps him from succumbing to temptation.
Ben-Hur’s crisis of faith, in which he must accept that Christ will not liberate Judea politically, crystalizes this motif. Ben-Hur is beset by doubt, unable to reconcile what he has seen of Christ with what he expects the Messiah to be. In this moment of doubt, he is offered the chance to lead a rebellion in his own name against the Romans but decides not to. Rather than place his faith in worldly means, Ben-Hur instead places his faith in the beatific certainty of Christ. His faith in Christ’s certainty is correct, because Christ’s mission to redeem mankind could not be completed without his Crucifixion.
Clothing
The novel reflects the multiethnic composition of Judea’s population in this time primarily through clothing. Roman characters are generally draped in togas or outfitted with a legionary’s armor, encompassing both the bureaucratic elite of the province and the common soldiers who carry out their orders. Ben-Hur and the other Jewish characters are described as dressing in a particularly simple manner with no adornment or jewelry. Their relatively austere clothing is meant to reflect their piety and humility. As Egyptians, the clothing of Balthasar and his daughter is distinctive and described as loose and flowing. Iras also wears a great deal of jewelry unlike the Jewish women of the novel.
The clothing associated with these three groups—Roman, Jewish, and Egyptian—takes on a symbolic meaning. Roman dress is meant to signify worldly power and ambition. Egyptian dress is presented as symbolizing pleasure without meaning, again harkening to the theme of The “East” and Orientalism. Jewish dress is meant to symbolize the austerity of Jewish religious law and the humility before God which Jews are supposed to keep in their minds.
