Absalom and Achitophel advice of the double agent Hushai over the good advice of Achitophel. Achitophel, realising that the rebellion is doomed to failure, goes home and hangs himself. Absalom is killed (against David's explicit commands) after getting caught by his hair in the thick branches of a great oak tree: "His head caught fast in the oak, and he was left hanging between heaven and earth, while the mule that was under him went on" (NRSV 2 Sam. 18:9). The death of his son, Absalom, causes David enormous personal grief. A second allegory in the poem, beginning on line 425, is the
Son of a Witch thinks is dead but revives under his care. Holding the baby up to the rain to wash away the birth blood, she "cleans up green." Liir: The protagonist of the story, Liir is not a conventional storybook hero, being filled with self-doubt. Although the facts of his parentage are obscure (even to himself), it becomes clear that he is the son of Elphaba and Fiyero. One piece of evidence of this is that he can fly Elphaba's broom, which others (like Trism) cannot. Liir is described as handsome, tall with black hair and pale skin. He is fourteen at the