Welcome back, Verons, and well done on an excellent discussion of John Gardner's Grendel. It doesn't take you folks too long to shake off the rust! It was a long(ish) read for us and I'm sure there are many things you considered that didn't make it into seminar. Please feel free to share them here. I will start with two questions, one we touched on and one we didn't.
Grendel and Grendel both complicate the idea of the hero. If Grendel is one of Western literature's first monsters, Beowulf is certainly one of its first heroes (and as we said in class, that is causation not correlation). Part of what the novel lays out is that heroes (Hrothgar, Unferth, the unnamed Beowulf) create monsters; it is true that Grendel is legitimately "other," however it is not until the one-two punch of having the axe thrown at him while he is trapped in the tree and the Shaper's song that his otherness is put to use. Gardner also suggests that this absolutely irresistible hero-monster story allows us to be blind to the other opportunity costs/collateral damage of the battle. So my question is: is heroism necessarily counter to the aims of social justice? Are there heroes that do not construct monsters?
Second, I'd like folks to share their answers to the final journal question. When thinking about your topic this semester (and if you drew a blank here, you could think about this in terms of the issues engaged in by your agency), what is the hero-monster story of your topic? Are there clear cut good guys/bad guys? Truths? Who or what would be the "Grendel" of that story -- not the monster, but the the other perspective that would challenge our assumptions about your topic?
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I have to chime in early this week because I may not be able to do so later, although I promise to read everything and will try to respond. Not certain how we are defining "hero" here. Technically speaking, if a hero is one who rescues, I guess s/he has to rescue you from something, and that something has to be considered bad. Which brings me to Stanley. I wanted to explain why I put Stanley's name on the board.
Stanley (Straker's patient) was a hero to some and a monster to others; isn't this usually the way? (i.e. "One person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter".) Even in his own head, Stanley couldn't necessarily decide which he was (especially as it became apparent that Maki Skoshanna was innocent), which revealed paradoxes of character that made his therapist question her own take on what constituted morality. (As noted in class, how we define ourselves and our reality is largely based on how others define us and our circumstances.) Real people are messy: grandiose AND filled with low self-esteem, angry AND forgiving, heroic AND monstrous. Any category that excludes this kind of contradiction hasn't described a real person. That is not to say that people aren't capable of heroism, just that it does not define them in total.
Antiheroes like Meusault in Camus' The Stranger or Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye were supposed to demonstrate that character is more complex than the binary that a hero/monster template suggests. I am familiar with many flawed protagonists from the era in which Gardiner wrote, a time when authority was being questioned and traditional institutions were coming apart at the seams. I do not know whether the antihero as a literary device was around at the time Beowolf was penned. But I would bet that good writers always doubted the purity of their categories and instead set them up as an indication of something for which one could strive (or avoid) rather than a mirror of what was. Or maybe they wrote 'em that way 'cause it sold a lot of books (or whatever the equivalent of that was in the 6th century.) We do like our binaries, after all, our monsters and heroes. Just look at FOX and MSNBC.
This is a very interesting subject. As Professor Stein said "We do like our binaries". As discussed in class and written in "Grendel", we need a monster. It's what makes us feel or act like heroes. We often feel better about ourselves when there is someone around us that we perceive to be "inferior"/monster like/the other.
As I read somewhere, and have realized, despite our best intentions, we do sometimes unintentionally inflict harm to the same people we aim to "help". I definitely believe that heroism can be counter to the aims of social justice. I have seen and heard of people who have reached out to an agency for assistance but some of the demands placed by these agencies are so stringent and counter-productive that the individuals feel trapped and feel more hopeless after going to these agencies as opposed to before. I cannot think of a hero that does not construct monsters. Despite the "best" intentions, heroes do construct monsters and definitely the reverse is true.
Concerning my topic, I cannot clearly articulate the hero/monster binary. However, with my agency, one issue immediately came to mind. It is not directly my agency. Let me explain. In my agency, there is a legal department that files documents on behalf of the clients for an adjustment of status with USCIS aka Immigration. The two grounds used are either VAWA for victims of domestic violence or U-Visa for people who assist law enforcement agencies in the prosecution of a crime. . For the U-Visa, a document must be signed by the ADA/DA. For many of the clients, english is not their primary language so at times, information might be lost, confused or misinterpreted during translation. For one particular client, the ADA refuses to sign the vital document. In part, because there might be miscommunication in translation (as explained by my supervisor) but also because the ADA feels that clients are willing to assist for the wrong reason. This makes absolutely no sense to me. Law enforcement agencies want people to put themselves at risk by giving information and helping to convict someone of a crime but have preconceived ideas about the informant's motives and thus refuse to assist the informant in return. This can be a deterrent to other victims or informants who might find themselves in similar circumstances. They may not want to help. Not all ADAs/DAs are the same. It's all about personality and probably experience but it leaves a "bitter taste in my mouth".
We all agree with Grendel’s proposition that heroes construct monsters, the brutes existent. However, in the realm of social justice, it could be argued that monsters create heroes. Here we use the word, monster, to refer to injustices in society such as, poverty, inequitable access to education and healthcare, and unreasonable incarceration—and the word, hero, to refer to individuals and organizations that emerge to combat these issues. In looking at this question from another perspective, it is also possible for us to ascribe the monster role to “the government,” whose shortcomings as the enforcer of rights arguably produces these justice issues. Yet, the government does not embody the ideal of a monster in totality. As we must have learned from our agencies and Sturz’s life, the government plays a major role in erecting and funding initiatives to address numerous social issues. This fact, to some extent, earns the government the hero title (see Professor Stein’s comment on people being messy).
That said, to dwell on this hero-monster dialectic would be for us to dwell on a caricature of the realities of social justice work.
For my topic on consumerism, I identified those who bear the social costs of consumerism as “the Grendel.” While the dominant narrative celebrates consumer spending for its job creation and growth effects, the Grendelian perspective is most concerned with the opportunity costs of consumerism. From this view, we can entertain the idea that the free market economy is both a virtue and a vice. From the dominant view, however, the idea of free market being a vice appears ridiculous: Flaunt that idea around too much and one would be presumed a communist.
Thank you, Professor Reitz, for an interesting start to this year’s blog.
While reading Grendel , I thought of the population at my agency. I have been conflicted about whether or not Grendel is a monster. Grendel can be considered a hero simply because his story offers us the outsiders a new perspective. In other words we wouldn't be aware or mindful now of human actions if we didn't read about Grendel's experiences. I think in Grendel’s eyes he considers himself the “victim”, just like at my agency…many of the clients feel like “victims”.
For my topic (microfinance), I think it’s very easy to create a clear cut of the idea that microfinance is beneficial or a really really bad idea. I think microfinance may look positive because the population it targets and the main goals of microfinance (increase in family income and therefore enhance opportunities for children to participate in full-time education, etc). But microfinance can also be looked at a method of doing more harm than good to the poorest. Such as, some micro- lenders charge more, pushing most annual rates to between 30 percent and 60 percent. These rates are high and what happens if poor clients cannot earn a greater return on their investment than the interest they must pay… they will become poorer as a result of microfinance, not wealthier.
I think Prof. Stein's idea of society's desire for the binary is key to understanding the topic of heroism. While reading the Shaper's speech in Grendle, Gardner exposes society's need for otherness. The existence of otherness allows for human (or group) exceptionalism. This need, however, creates an environment where there must always be a monster or our identity comes into question. Therefore, monsters may be falsey identified and the line of otherness may be intentionally blurred. In my topic, drug users, stripped of their humanity, are labeled monster. They are massed and herded like animals to abominable condition. How could we do such a thing? We skewed the line of otherness so that we could target this group. I think James hit the nail on the head by stating monsters, in terms of social justice, create the hero entity necessary to combat it. For the aforementioned reasons (in conjunction with Simone's experience), however, I think the idea of heroism can be harmful to the goal of social justice.
I do not necessarily believe heroism is a counter to social justice but there are distinct differences. Heroism tends to glorify the individual and have clear “monsters,” which the hero must defeat. Social justice is about trying to equate levels to close significant gaps between individuals. The practitioners of social justice are aware that they are no superman, which can defeat such enemies such as poverty, incarceration, and homelessness.
Every hero constructs monsters whether they intend to or not. The origin of heroes and monsters seems to be two sides of a coin. The hero must battles a monster in order to legitimize himself or herself as a hero. Monsters create purpose to the hero and as the hero evolves so does the monster.
I believe the law would challenge the assumptions of my topic. The law has a way of making rules seem logical but rules are only able to make a portion of the population happy. People praise affirmative action for helping people of color with employment but cannot see the effect of quotas and limits in certain job areas.
I am curious about this tendency towards the binary in the first place: is it a particularly Western tradition to think in binaries? This is not a question for you to offer opinion on at this juncture, but rather a question that would require further study. I'm just concerned about us getting stuck in the idea that thinking in binaries is universal and/or inevitable.
The other question I have (related to the "Shaper") is: in what ways do binaries themselves (the construction of an either/or; hero/villian; white/black; male/female, etc.) serve the interests of power (and the ideologues who helped justify and rationalize power--the propagandists, the ones with the power to shape the narrative, such as the Shaper)?
This “binary” conversation as Simonne refers to it, is just one of the many religious/metaphoric undertones of Grendel. The Shaper’s story in depicting light and darkness can be seen as a metaphor to the binary relationship of heaven and hell. The light and darkness relationship can also be seen as the rich and the poor in a society as each group is usually born into the economic circumstance they are in. Having opposite ends of a spectrum merely allows for clear classification in the benefit of one party and the inevitable negative connotation of another. To answer Professor Reitz’s question, there is a little give on both sides in who constructs heroes and monsters. In terms of our current justice system, social constructs that prosecute certain populations harder than others can create criminals (or monsters in Grendel’s context) out of regularly targeted populations. To bring it back to the binary metaphor, the poor are usually subject to the most scrutiny from the CJ system and are characterized as poor in comparison to their wealthier and less targeted counterparts. In a sense, understanding which side of this binary social construct you are on can create a complex on how you see your role in a society in which you will become the criminal (monster) or the philanthropic savior (hero).
Below is my answer to #6 verbatim:
The topic I chose doesn’t necessarily come with direct preconceived notions I can think of. The populations I intend to work with though are young adults who have either been convicted of crimes or are in public schools where children are often exposed to crime. I want to provide them with music education as an initiative to promote a unique form of universal communication. The pre-conceived notion I may be coming in with is that no one in their lives have been communicating to them in a way that promotes positivity. For someone to “Grendel” it is for someone in my program to already come from a place where positive communal communication is offered and that person is still negatively involved in the criminal justice system (proving my assumptions/hypothesis wrong). Or someone can “Grendel” society by taking advantage of this program I am setting up and generate positive and articulate communication with others. They would thus become an unlikely positive story (like an ex-con turned classical composer) in a society where that accomplishment is seen as unlikely.
This thought is still undeveloped as the meaning of the question is still slightly ambiguous to me.
I can agree with what many have said already. In relation to Professor Reitz's question regarding whether or not there are heroes who exist without the construction of monsters; by definition, a "hero" is simply a person admired for great or brave acts or fine qualities (Merriam-Webster). I think Professor Stein was right on in highlighting our tendencies to hold on to our "binary ways". There is this "need" to label parties as "the good guys" and the "bad guys". With that being said, social policies aiming to aid certain populations can go terribly wrong because of the alleged need to attain a hero/heroine status. My topic regarding deinstitutionalization is a great example (I don't want to give anything away). I look forward to Thursday's class!
I agree with a lot of what has been said thus far, everyone has made some very strong points in this discussion. In particular, I strongly agree with James’s comment regarding how monsters create heroes in the world of social justice. As we all know many social justice initiatives arise to address very specific needs within society. The monstrous injustice that a particular group of people often suffers through is thus the creator of the heroic organizations that are created to champion the welfare of the people in need. Therefore it can be said that there are many situations in which the heroes of social justice do not create monsters. With that being said I also agree with, and would like to expand upon, Anthony’s comment that heroism can be harmful to social justice initiatives.
Although I agree that there are many situations in which the heroes do not create monsters in social justice, I feel that the heroes, in a way, sustain the monsters, which in turn hurts social justice initiatives. In many situations, both the hero and the monster in social justice end up being very specific organizations in which the hero organization combats the injustices caused by the monster organization. Although the hero may not have created the monster, the presence of the hero essentially creates a relationship of dependency on the monster. Just as the humans in Grendel needed Grendel to be the brute existence, hero organizations need a monstrous entity to justify, their own existence. In many situations it would benefit the hero organization’s causes to unlabel the monster organization a “monster,” and potentially work with them to solve specific injustices (especially in situations where, as James says, the monster organization is the government). Unfortunately I feel that many times hero organizations maintain the label of their adversarial organizations as the “monster” because of the inherent need of this monster to justify their own existence, which in the end only hurts their social justice goals.
In regards to the second question I was unsure of the hero-monster relationship in my own topic for this semester, I need to think a little bit more about this before my class. In relation to my agency, I feel that that the hero monster relationship is the following: the hero would naturally be CEO since it provides immediate assistance to individuals with recent convictions searching for full-time work, while I believe the “monster” would be the employers that refuse to hire individuals with convictions and thus make the need for assistance in finding employment for this population so great. The Grendel in this situation would then be whatever narrative these employers could tell to justify their refusal to hire employees that have recent convictions.
Hi All,
Great insight. I think there are heroes that do not construct monsters, but i think this is found in the more unconventional heroes, especially those who those good in private. Last semester, while discussing Sturz's book, we discussed the idea that charities and organizations that help the homeless actually perpetuate poverty, rather than tackle the sources and help end it. Could this be intentional? After all, these organizations need poverty to survive, or else what would they fight for?
I agree with Professor Reitz and Professor Stein that creating binaries are much too tempting. Whenever we hear a story on the news, we immediately label one person as the "bad guy" and the other as the "good guy." A few days ago I was watching a spiderman movie with my 6year old brother. In the movie, the "monster" suddenly becomes "good" at the end, and I found it hard to explain to him that he wasn't really a *monster*, he just did a monster-like thing because he was extremely desperate. Stories are much easier for use to process and to ultimately, forget about, when theres someone to put all the blame on because he's just a "bad person." If we actually confronted the complexity of characters who commit awful crimes, it would complicate the situation, and make isolating and punishing these people much harder. Then, we can put them away for years, one by one, hoping to weed out all the "bad apples" of society as if it were black-and-white.
What a beautiful and reflective blog. I especially want to keep holding in mind particular ideas that have been raised.
James: The idea that monsters create heroes.
Imtashal: The idea that Grendel may be the hero in this story.
Jaraed: The reminder that heroism "glorifies the individual" (Herb Sturz?) as opposed to the collective work of social justice.
Simonne: Although Simonne has said it's hard to see heroes and monsters in her topic, I hope you will all keep them in mind when you do her readings on Tuskegee the week after next. It's a virtual Beowulf take!
Prof. Waterston: Asks whether the emphasis on the binary is universal or more particular to Western thought. Great question. (I sure do not know the answer.) I want to add as an afterthought to the question, though, whether it is a tendency of Western thinkers to romanticize other cultures by emphasizing their more interdependent, less binary, nature and ignoring other tendencies in those cultures toward the binary. I don't know of any culture that doesn't create "others". I have often been depressed to learn that things I was taught in school about other cultures being more accepting turned out, on closer inspection, to be false.
Hi all,
Most of the points that I wanted to touch upon have already been beautifully said by my fellow Verons, but I will say this: I think this binary categorization that we're inclined to do with good versus bad is a dangerous thing to fall back on. I say dangerous because it then assigns specific characteristics which one has to fit in order to be considered "bad" or "good"; the hero or the villain. In Grendel, I felt strongly about Grendel NOT being the villain he was painted, but instead a victim of his circumstance.
I know I speak a lot about contextualization, but in every hero/villain story, we must always remember the context of the story given and what information we are being provided that sways our perspective of what/who is bad or good.
I speak about the danger of the binary because in my field at Vera, and in the topic I will be discussing for the class we deal with the gender binary. Without giving too much away, we deal with gender-- a social construct-- and we only accept "Male" and "Female". Within these binaries, we accept certain characteristics that are only assigned to either/or and this is socially accepted idea of the "norm". There are many individuals who do not live within this binary and instead reject this social construct and reject the idea of gender itself. How does this translate into the communities that we work in (namely, when dealing with Domestic and Sexual violence)?
Because we expect certain traits from one gender to the other, we limit our scope in how we are able to help individuals who do not fit under society's expectations (i.e., a man who is the victim of domestic or sexual violence).
This idea of one being a hero, thus making the other a villain is a dangerous thought process because then we are unable to allow ourselves to humanize the "villain" and instead fall back on heuristics that don't allow growth and critical analysis of a particular situation.
(I hope this is all coming out clear- my mind is running faster than I can type!)
Much love!
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