YMMV / Book of Esther

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • One Bible study published online suggests that the book doesn't mention God because Esther and Mordecai are examples of non-religious Jewish people who save the day doing morally questionable acts. (Examples given include the protagonists not relying on God but trickery and the Jewish people using the plot against them as an excuse to murder their enemies and seize their property and then having a really big drunken party to celebrate it)
  • Vashti: a vain, haughty and selfish wife, in contrast to the virtuous Esther, or an admirable, dignified, proto-feminist figure, whose defiance of her foolish husband is vindicated by Esther's later ability to sway him?
• Catharsis Factor: Haman's downfall is perhaps one of the most glorious moments in biblical literature.
• Common Knowledge:
  • Some popular interpretations take "Haman the Agagite" as meaning he was descended from Agag the Amalekite, a sworn enemy of the Jews whose kingdom Saul failed to wipe out in the Books of Samuel, making Haman's backstory a Genocide Backfire. This hits the slight snag that 1 Samuel 15:33 seems to indicate that Agag was the last of his house; also, why wouldn't they just call his descendant "the Amalekite"? A more recent archaeological discovery clears it up: Agag (or Agazi) is listed as the name of a territory next to Media that was conquered and assimilated by the Persian empire.
  • It is also frequently thought that hamantaschen (a pastry typically baked by Ashkenazi Jews for Purim celebrations) is supposed to represent Haman’s severed ears, not helped by the fact that some similar pastries in Sephardic cuisine have names that literally translate to “Haman’s ears”. Not only is nothing stated to happen to Haman’s ears in the story, but this could also be considered blood libel. In reality, “hamantaschen” translates to "Haman's pockets." They were originally meant to be filled with poppy seeds, and were originally called "mohntaschen" (“poppy seed-filled pockets”), which was later changed to "hamantaschen" as a play on words, since in Yiddish, "Haman" rhymes with "mohn."
• Complete Monster: Haman the Agagite, one of the original antisemites in Jewish folklore, is a vizier under Emperor Ahasuerus (Xerxes) whose ambition and ego know no bounds. Haman is introduced forcing citizens to bow to him; when a fellow advisor, Mordecai the Judean, refuses to bow to him—possibly on account of Haman embroidering a graven image into his clothing—Haman plots a genocide against Persian Jewry as a whole, manipulating the emperor into giving him his signet so that he may write it into law. When Mordecai still refuses to bow to him, Haman builds a gallows on which he intends to hang the latter.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Esther is one for the Bible as a whole. She's only mentioned in this book, but the story of her heroism is very memorable, and even people with a casual knowledge of Jewish holidays can probably tell you who she was.
• Fair for Its Day: While the story isn't particularly progressive view of woman compared to the modern day, the main protagonist is a woman who uses her charm and wiles to protect her people from destruction.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The idea of Haman, an egotist with a chip on his shoulder wanting to wipe out the Jews is a bit harder to stomach when you read about a certain 20th-century figure.
• Rooting for the Empire: In a particularly dark version of this trope, no small number of anti-Semites have opted to celebrate the genocidal Haman as the good guy. Nazi Germany liked to carry out anti-Jewish atrocities on Purim with the stated justification that they were avenging Haman.
• Spoiled by the Format: There's a Beauty Contest in chapter 2, only a fifth of the way into the story, and the title isn't "The Book Of Some Other Random Young Woman"... who do you think is going to win?
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Vashti, the Persian queen before Esther, refused to parade naked before a bunch of drunk guys, in spite of her husband's orders. The result: not only does she get divorced, but an edict is passed stating that the husband and father is the head of the household. Some Midrashic traditions got around this trope by holding that Vashti was in fact a vain and haughty woman who only refused to show up because she had suffered an embarrassing disfigurement, making her divorce come off as a Break the Haughty.
• Woolseyism: The name for the Persian king used in the story is "Ahasuerus", which is a Hebrew equivalent to the name "Xerxes". Later translations have thus replaced the former name with the latter. Others, however, translate it as "Artaxerxes", who was Xerxes I's son.

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