Esther's motivation

In my last post I talked about the challenges in adapting the Book of Esther to make Xerxes and Esther the protagonists instead of Mordecai and Haman. In this post, I'll delve into how to face some of those challenges.

One of the questions the Xerxes Atlas crew raised after reading through the first batch of pitches from writers was what Esther's motivation is given her circumstances.

"Why does she do what she does? On the surface it seems unrealistic..."

Esther does basically two things in this story: first she wins Xerxes' heart, and second she eventually convinces him to counteract Haman's law and spare the Jews. These are not just reasonable things to do given her situation, they are basically essential to her survival. So why is it that on the surface what Esther does seems unrealistic?

I think the problem is not that audience will question Esther's choices, but that they will question whether she had a choice at all. In the original text, things happen to Esther because a). she is beautiful (being taken to Xerxes harem, becoming queen), and b). Mordecai tells her to do things (reporting the assassination, foiling Haman's plot). This means her character in the original text is basically static. The only choice we see her struggling with is whether or not to approach Xerxes to plead the plight of the Jews, and even that choice seems pre-ordained -- if she did nothing, she would be no worse than Haman himself.

If what happens to Esther rings slightly false, it's because her story seems too easy, too devoid of real conflict. In the original story we never get to see what Esther wants, or how she feels about her captivity, her marriage or her Jewish heritage. In reality, she would have felt conflicted about all of these things.

So...

In order to make the story seem realistic, we must see that conflict alive in Esther.

By determining what conflicts Esther is facing, we can work backwards to work out how her motivation works in this story!

More soon.