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.
Character Analysis
David
David is the protagonist of A Tale of Three Kings, appearing as the main character from the first chapter to the last. The novel’s title, then, has the potential to be slightly misleading, as the book does not deal in equal measure with three kings. Rather, it has David, the middle king, as its central character, and it studies how David behaves toward the leader who precedes him (Saul, in Part 1) and the one who tries to succeed him (Absalom, in Part 2). The book recounts certain portions of the biblical story of David as Israel’s second king, but it is not intended to be a complete portrait of the biblical/historical character, as it skips over many of the most famous episodes in his life, such as his defeat of the giant Goliath. He is a round character and also somewhat dynamic, growing throughout the plot.
In a few instances, the book assumes motives for David’s actions that are speculative, such as his decision not to stand against Absalom because of a noble resolution to leave the matter in God’s hands (whereas a straightforward reading of the biblical narrative suggests David’s decision to flee from Absalom was made because most of the country was supporting Absalom, and the only choice was whether to flee or die). The depiction of David in A Tale of Three Kings is thus based on the biblical character of King David, but it does not follow the features of the biblical character in every respect.
Within A Tale of Three Kings, David is depicted as being pure-hearted, selfless, and perpetually trusting in God rather than in the efficacy of his own actions. He is marked by dramatic emotions, but these run especially toward emotions associated with suffering, loneliness, and sorrow, not with anger. While an apparent passivity and uncertainty mark many of David’s scenes in the book, these are countered by the strength of his resolve to place the affairs of his life in God’s hands alone. David’s character does not change radically throughout the narrative, but it is deepened and strengthened by his experience of suffering under Saul’s pursuits in Part 1, which ingrain in him a tendency to submit to God’s will rather than seize authority for himself, for which most of the characters with whom he interacts show the greatest respect.
In the novel’s allegorical application, David represents a church leader who is anointed by God for that role and who also has the right inner character for healthy spiritual leadership. This stands in contrast to Saul, who, although also anointed by God, does not have an inner character that promotes healthy church life. David’s chief virtue in this regard is his resolve to submit to God’s will and to view authority among God’s people as something that can be given or taken only by God.
Saul
Saul is the first king of Israel, with a reign that is marked in the biblical record by his successful act of unifying the 12 Israelite tribes against the rising military threat of the nearby Philistines. As with David’s character, Saul’s portrayal in A Tale of Three Kings is not intended to be a complete portrait of the biblical/historical character. Rather, his role is mainly that of a foil, standing in contrast to the portrayal of David. While Saul is the most frequently mentioned character other than David, he does not appear directly in many scenes and has no lines of dialogue in the novel, underscoring his function as a foil rather than a fully rounded character in his own right. In addition to being a foil, he can also be regarded as an antagonist due to the importance of his murderous pursuit of David in the narrative of Part 1.
His actions, most of which are narrated rather than directly depicted, come down to two main roles: First, he throws spears at David when the latter is living in his household as a young man; and second, he tries to hunt David down in the wilderness. Each of these actions puts David in a position of danger, where he must decide whether to resist Saul through active measures or to evade and keep on running. He is mostly flat and static.
In the novel’s allegorical application, Saul represents a church leader who is anointed and called by God but whose inner character does not promote a healthy church life. Despite the emotional damage that a Saul-character does to his spiritual community, the book’s advice (largely depicted through David’s actions and the narrator’s comments) resists the idea of anyone taking active measures to remove Saul-characters from their positions of authority. Since, in the book’s view, the leadership of the spiritual community is God’s to give, and God has given it to Saul, the book takes the perspective that God alone can remove leaders like Saul. Further, the book underscores the idea that it is largely impossible to know whether a particular leader is a Saul or a David and that sometimes people mistakenly assume a leader is a Saul because of certain external problems the church might be facing, when in fact that leader is a David who is doing their best to deal with intractable difficulties. Even if a leader is a Saul, the book suggests that God may be using that person to test and refine the hearts of the people through the road of suffering and submission.
Absalom
Like Saul, the character of Absalom looms large in the book but is rarely depicted directly in scenes, mostly appearing in narrated sections and in references by other characters. Like all the other characters, he is based on a biblical/historical character: a prince of Israel, one of David’s oldest sons, who gains widespread popularity in Israel during the later portions of David’s reign. Whereas Saul was the foil and antagonist for Part 1 of the book, Absalom fills a nearly identical role in Part 2. His actions are set in contrast to David’s behavior, and his opposition to David—ultimately, his attempted overthrow of David’s reign—drives the narrative arc of the story. The main difference between Saul’s role and Absalom’s is that of their relative placement in authority structures. In Part 1, Saul was the one in authority and David was not; in Part 2, David is in authority and Absalom is not. Absalom thus represents a foil and antagonist as someone who is not yet a leader but who aspires to become one. Like Saul, he is mostly flat and static.
In the novel’s allegorical application, Absalom represents someone in a church community who observes the problems going on in the church and believes that they can offer a better solution than the person currently in authority. Slowly gathering support among other members behind the scenes, the Absalom-character builds a resistance against the leader until they are ready to present a challenge, either seeking to expel the leader or to split the church and carry as many of the members away as possible. Like Saul, the Absalom character does not have the right inner character to promote a spiritually healthy community, and, in the book’s view, any church such a person leads will suffer from that leader’s continued abuses. While the book portrays Saul as someone who is truly called and anointed by God, it portrays Absalom as not being anointed. Although David expresses his uncertainty regarding God’s plan, and leaves room for the possibility that God might intend Absalom to be the new king, other characters, like the Sage and Zadok, remark on the fact that raising a rebellion is an act that itself contradicts the possibility of an authentic calling to leadership. Nonetheless, the book appears to advise a David-character in church leadership not to take an active stance against the machinations of an Absalom-character, because leadership is God’s to give, take, or defend, and such actions are not the prerogative of the leader.
The Narrator
The narrator occupies a larger role in A Tale of Three Kings than in a conventional novel, acting in some respects as a character within the text. The book opens with the narrator welcoming the reader to observe the story about to be played out as a theatrical drama in front of them, and throughout the story the narrator interacts with the reader in several different ways. As in many novels, the narrator is the main voice telling the story, but the narrator also adds chapter-length excurses to explain the spiritual dynamics behind the story and occasionally interacts in direct dialogue with the reader. The reader’s questions appear as quotations in the text, to which the narrator responds at length, giving certain chapters a dialogic character. It is the narrator’s voice that gives the main points of interpretation and application to the story, encouraging the reader to think about David’s narrative in terms of authority and submission and advising a reliance on God’s action rather than one’s own when it comes to leadership conflicts in the church.
The narrator is assumed to be the voice of the author, Gene Edwards himself, a deduction drawn from the Prologue’s prefatory materials (where he welcomes his “dear reader” to the theatrical drama) and from the narrator’s conclusion in the final chapter, where he references another drama soon to come, called The Divine Romance (which happens to be another of Edwards’s novels). The identity of the reader-character, by contrast, is only loosely associated with the person actually reading the book. As Part 1 of the novel progresses, it becomes clear from the reader-character’s questions that the character represents a person who holds suspicions about their church leader’s worthiness and fitness for that role, which may or may not be true of the book’s actual reader in each case.
