51 pages • 1 hour read
Gene EdwardsA Tale of Three Kings: A Study of Brokenness
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1980A 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
Anointing
The symbol of anointing is central to the questions of spiritual leadership addressed in A Tale of Three Kings. In the biblical accounts on which the novel is based, an anointing with oil (often enacted by a prophet) is the ritual by which God appoints a person to the office of kingship in Israel. The novel opens with an account of David as a young shepherd, receiving an anointing to kingship at the hands of the prophet Samuel, even though it is still years before he will ascend the throne. Saul, likewise, had previously been anointed by Samuel to be Israel’s king, and it is the validity of that anointing that keeps David from striking back against Saul’s assaults. The novel makes no reference to an anointing when Absalom has himself proclaimed king, and the absence of a reference is one of the devices by which the novel leaves Absalom’s potential calling to the kingship an unanswered question for David.
The language of “anointing” is also frequently used in Christian churches, particularly those with ties to the evangelical or Pentecostal traditions, referring to the action of the Holy Spirit upon a person’s life. In particular, it usually refers to a person being called to an office of leadership or being supernaturally gifted for carrying out a particular kind of ministry. A Tale of Three Kings uses references to anointing in both the biblical and the contemporary Christian senses. When a leader is referred to as being “anointed,” it is a claim that that person is God’s intended leader for that community, divinely called and appointed for service regardless of other problems that may accompany their leadership. Anointing has a role throughout this narrative, and sometimes its not being mentioned also has a role.
Spear
The symbol of a spear appears in both Parts 1 and 2 of the novel but holds a central place in the earlier section, describing the relationship between Saul and David. It is derived from an episode in the biblical narrative in which Saul, worried that the young David’s rising popularity threatens to eclipse his own authority, tries to kill David by throwing a spear at him. Thus, in the novel, the symbol of the spear is always tied to this action: “throwing spears.” After dodging the spear, David chooses not to throw it back at Saul but rather to evade Saul’s hostility and pretend the episode did not happen.
In the novel’s allegorical application, “throwing spears” is a reference to the personal attacks that can happen in a church conflict when someone (either a leader or a layperson) is angrily trying to undermine another person’s influence. “Throwing spears” can refer to open criticisms, spreading rumors, emotional manipulation, misconstruing another person’s character or motivations, and so on. The book’s narrator advises readers not to get into spear-throwing battles with others but to follow David’s model by simply dodging the spears and refusing to attack the other person in return.
Theater
One of the motifs used to create the unique synthesis of genres in A Tale of Three Kings is the image of a theater. In the prefatory materials to the Prologue, the narrator greets the reader and invites them to take a seat in front of the theatrical drama about to unfold. Throughout the story, references to this motif, both explicitly and implicitly, abound. The narrator frequently speaks to the reader directly, even responding to questions, as two audience members in a theater might quietly do with one another. At other times, the narrator draws the reader’s attention to another stage-character, as when pointing out the emerging figure of “Absalom the Second” (50) stepping out of the shadows at the end of Part 1.
The motif of the theater allows Edwards to build his novel by means of several different literary styles. The chapters, which are generally very brief, alternate between narrated exposition of dramatic scenes, commentary upon those scenes, dialogues between characters, excurses of spiritual and theological application, and dialogues between the narrator and the reader, who are sitting beside one another within the theater motif. The chapters that are devoted to dramatic scenes function like scenes in a play, with only one location being portrayed in each chapter and a scene change resulting in the commencement of a new chapter. The chapter-as-theatrical-scene pattern also lets Edwards use dramatic license in arranging his materials, as when he includes a scene that is chronologically far out of sequence from the others (Chapter 17), a choice that is more amenable to the flexibility of a play than a conventional historical novel. The theater motif allows Edwards to make the reader question their role in this drama as well as the contemporary equivalent in which they live.
