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Griffith's Ambition - An Interpretation. :spoilers:
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rossoline (#40078)
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  Griffith's Ambition - An Interpretation. :spoilers:
I know it's probably reaching to expect anyone to actually read all of this (but I'd really love it if you'd indulge). But, this anime had a huge impact on me, which is why I had to do this write up. So, if you ever find yourself looking for a drawn out and in depth interpretation of Berserk, here it is. I finished the anime about a week or two ago, and have recently started the manga. If this thread actually goes anywhere, I'm hoping there might be some evolution to this interpretation.



It may be stating the obvious, but to me the underlying premise of Berserk basically resolves itself as a meditation on dreams. Not the kind you have at night obviously, but ambitions, and the positive and negative effects that can be associated with them. I'm going to try to deconstruct the narrative through Griffith's psychological persona, since I think the narrative structure is largely a reflection of his dream, hopefully with the most general perspective I can manage.

Griffith's character drew me so much back to this excerpt from Karen Horney's preface to Neurosis and Human Development:

Quote:
Under favorable conditions man's energies are put into the realization of his own potentialities. Such a development is far from uniform. According to his particular temperament, faculties, propensities, and the conditions of his earlier and later life, he may become softer or harder, more cautious or more trusting, more or less self reliant, more contemplative or more outgoing; and he may develop his special gifts. But wherever his course takes him, it will be his given potentialities which he develops.

Under inner stress, however, a person may become alienated from his real self. He will then shift the major part of his energies to the task of molding himself, by a rigid system of inner dictates, into a being of absolute perfection. For nothing short of godlike perfection can fulfill his idealized image of himself and satisfy his pride in the exalted attributes which (so he feels) he has, could have, or should have.


The story of Berserk has a parable like quality in how the fantasy setting enables Griffith to work himself into that desired subconscious mold of 'godlike perfection' by literally facilitating him with the ability to carry his neurotic ambition to the extremities of it's delusion by actually becoming a godlike figure. Griffith is quite possibly the single most neurotic character I've seen in anime - worse than Shinji even. Of course, externally, Griffith deals with his issues much differently than Shinji does; Shinji is the typical whiney neurotic whereas Griffith is that rare stoic, intelligent psychopath. These type of anxiety disorders are not typically regarded as genetic, but rather usually stem from bad childhoods. In other words, it is considered a healthy part of human development to grow out of them - especially for someone so intelligent and resourceful. But Griffith makes the conscious decision not to do so by desperately clinging to his neurotic fantasy and allowing it to carry him and everyone who attaches themselves to him further down the spiral, and we see the results manifested into the way this ultimately shapes the plot.

He is really the most compelling character to me, but I feel like it's too bad we don't get any of his history. We know that he's severely screwed up, but we ultimately don't know why. Where does his reckless ambition come from? Why does he feel like his life is meaningless if he isn't king? We see him at one point contemplate a simple life, but he ultimately can't be contented with that. To me that is one of the few moments when he actually tries to look at himself as a real person, but out of fear he quickly dispels any such notion. We can assume he has never had healthy mutually reciprocal relationships with family and friends through which he could meaningfully learn to identify himself through others love for him. As a result he has externally crafted himself as the very essence of strength and power, but inwardly he is emotionally very weak.

His existential crisis is defined by his ignorance of himself; he has no idea who he really is, and out of fear of this creates a false image of himself as king and convinces himself that he must live up to that preconceived notion at any cost. Otherwise he is at risk of being consumed by the void that is his absence of true identity, which is, somewhat unbeknownst to him, probably his greatest subconscious fear. (In the manga, he says '...if you abandon a dream, suppress it in your heart, it's like suicide' - he believes that without his dream he will become nothing and consumed by nothingness.) Actually, I might add that there's an almost paradoxical quality to this deception. I'm not certain whether we can rightfully deduce that Griffith's self-image is either a byproduct or a basis of his loss of true identity. Rather, it's probably a fusion of both.

In any case, I would have liked to have seen a little about his childhood to know exactly where he was working from. The only possibility the series allows us to infer is that his childhood may have been similar to Caska's (which is maybe part of the reason he rescued her), but there would have to be something more than that even. The series alludes to Griffith as a child - indeed, the demons show him himself as a child, which is essentially what he is at heart. His dream is ultimately a child's fantasy - a self centered one that doesn't take the rest of the world into consideration the way a responsible adult would. He seeks his personal raison d'etre at the expense of everyone around him.

That quest predicated on the expendability of his followers endows him with the prototypical 'vampire' type personality, running the complete polarity of Kantian morality by utilizing everyone as a means for his own ends rather than viewing the relationships he has to be ends in and of themselves. When Zodd tells Guts that if he considers Griffith a friend that it will lead to his death he is warning him how Griffith will eventually suck all of the life (use) out of him and then throw him away, which is ultimately what he ends up trying to do when he makes the conscious decision to sacrifice the hawks. Griffith makes this clear enough when he says that he doesn't consider his comrades to be friends. He has no friends; he is afraid of even trying to make friends and his commentary on how his stature essentially prevents him from doing so is really just lying to himself to mask that fear so that he can avoid dealing with it on a conscious level. When he says that a true friend is his equal it's basically just an extension of that self deception. 'He would fight back even against me', he says. But in his mind he is king - no one could ever be his equal. Guts leaves the hawks, fights back against Griffith, renounces his willingness to follow another's dream and makes it clear that he intends to seek his own. Does Griffith then offer due respect and show his happiness that he's finally found a true friend? Hardly. In the end, Griffith has only his self centered dream, for which everyone is ultimately expendable.

Once Guts realizes this by overhearing Griffith's conversation with the princess it becomes, naturally, a turning point for him. Guts comes to wonder how much Griffith's submission to his demons was a result of his departure from the hawks, and it's a legitimate question. Griffith basically perceived Guts as a valuable weapon that was worth risking his own neck for. That's why Griffith dodged the question of why he was willing to risk his life for him. It was just being manipulative - allowing Guts to think that he saved him because he cared about him as a person, or a friend, rather than just a device that was useful (necessary actually) for the fulfillment of his ambition. In that respect, Guts departure was a piece of Griffith's dream, and security, walking away.

This leads to his emotional breakdown that cracks his external shell long enough for him to make a fatal mistake. They say the eyes are the window to the soul. With Griffith this is most certainly true. I love how we peer into his intentions through his eyes. This is most obvious when he is glaring at an enemy, or his 'prey', but is most telling when he is stumbling through his deeply rooted insecurities that he's trying so desperately to suppress. Those are the moments when his dream has grown unstable, and he is doubting, which is really unbearable for such a neurotic character. We notice that his eyes are the same when he is tearing at his arms in the lake and when he goes to seduce the princess. These are the moments when his void becomes too much with him, when he starts to face it consciously, and we can see it in his eyes - he is afraid.

Along those lines, Guts is probably a big part of the reason why Griffith ponders the possibility of a normal life. Griffith himself says that Guts is the only person who ever made him forget his dream. They could have been real friends, but Griffith (though he may have come close) ultimately never developed enough courage and smudged out the opportunity, and that was a big part of his downfall - he needed a real friend. Part if the reason Guts turns out better is because of his relationship with Caska. Griffith is always off limits to criticism, which allows him to imagine himself as he sees fit, but the way Caska criticizes Guts forces him to introspectively evaluate himself and consciously deal with his negative qualities in ways Griffith never has to. I love the scenes where we see Guts working through his flashbacks of Caska's painful words. He wants to believe she is wrong about him, but her words force him to really reevaluate himself and look at himself honestly and objectively. It is the struggle to identify himself there that shapes him into more of a man than Griffith will ever become. Likewise, Guts response and actions towards Caska afterwards causes her to similarly rethink herself. Through this, they both realize that they've helped each other grow, and as a result feel closer - which is part of the reason they fall in love.

Mike asked in another thread if Griffith was really a bad person. I think Griffith is, more or less, a product of circumstance. As mentioned, he probably had a desperate childhood similar to Caska's. Also I would think that receiving the behelit along with the witches prophecy probably had a big impact on him. But I wonder how legit the prophecy was; I'm tempted to see the witch as akin to the oracle in the Matrix - kind of doling out self fulfilling prophecies. After all, we clearly see in the end that Griffith has the ability to turn back, the demons make it clear to him that his destiny must ultimately be the result of his own free will. It's made very clear that he has a choice, and that succumbing to his demons (literally and figuratively speaking) is a product of his own volition. Each episode starts out with an epigraph about destiny. I think this is destiny in the sense that we are inevitably restricted to our cultural and ecological inheritance mixed with our inherent potentialities, and in the case of Berserk, a bit of divine intervention. In this way Griffith plays out a destiny. The thing about being human though is that we have the ability to rise above circumstance, to negate the gods and destiny, and to make our own destinies through our own choices. Griffith has the chance, but ultimately fails to do this. He blindly plays out his role without ever seriously questioning whether he, and certainly not if anyone else was really better off for it.

To somewhat briefly touch on how the series deals with the concept of ambition from the other characters perspectives, Corkas says this in episode 19:

Quote:
A man has to make many compromises in his life because of his personal limits and his responsibility to face up to reality. Only a child can be content with just a dream.



Corkas is directing that at Guts, but I really think it's much more apt as commentary on Griffith. Also, I really think that's some of the best, most practical advice I've ever heard in an anime. It's wise to be honest with yourself about your true strengths and weaknesses. Corkas is essentially just warning of delusions of grandeur (of course, Griffith is 'special' as he says, and I guess is thereby excused). However, I think he, in his jealousy, is selling Guts, and possibly himself, a little short. Applying that advice objectively to your endeavors is one thing, but using it as an excuse for living in someone else's shadow is another. People follow people like Griffith because of the fact that he so blindly believes in his dream that others who aren't as confident or talented see him as a way to hitch a ride to the top. But I think Guts is right for wanting to follow his own motives - except that he doesn't seem to be certain what they are.

Because of Guts lack of motive, throughout Berserk, there really is no hero, not until the very end. Heroics, but no hero. Guts eventually becomes a hero by becoming the opposite of Griffith. His ambition becomes to protect the innocent and drive out tyranny, whereas Griffith's ambition had always ultimately been to sacrifice the innocent for the sake of creating what would inevitably become his own tyranny. The irony is that that 'destiny' is no less circumstantial than Griffith's. But that's why I move away from the interpretation of their destinies as absolute. To allude once again to the Matrix, I basically see the God Hands as essentially manipulating humans similarly to how the machines do; setting up the players and playing field and manipulating people with prophecies and all. I use that analogy loosely, but I think it works well enough. It's simply a philosophical step backwards - instead of the machines we have Descartes' malicious demon. Besides, the series wouldn't make such an overt issue of Griffith's free will if it were only incidental. Perhaps Guts was an unaccounted variable for the God Hands and is thereby a legitimate threat to whatever their plans may be, or contrarily, perhaps they were intentionally manipulating these two men to stage a battle between the ultimate hero and the ultimate villain. Of course, I'm not sure I can really back that up either way. Anyway, Guts is really a simple character. He experiences an existential crisis very different from Griffith's. The former simply needs to establish a raison d'etre, whereas the latter has to fight furiously to maintain (or justify) what he perceives to be his inherent god like purpose.

I'm really not sure whether the perspective the series takes on Caska is merely a truism, or if it's something feminists would find deplorable. Caska doesn't seem to be even given the intuition (let alone right) to develop her own set of dreams. Her fate is strictly confined to the man that she attaches herself to. Even though she is a warrior, she still gets branded with the condescending label of the Other.

When all is said and done, the series shows us that while it's okay to have the ambition to follow your own dreams, it's something else entirely to delude yourself into thinking you are a god among men, or that you somehow 'deserve' such stature. It's at this point that the series starts to brush up against a remark about the nature of history that I'm not sure I can really intelligently comment on. Namely, what about our leaders? Where did the ambition of, say, Napoleon or Alexander come from? How did they rally so many to their causes? These are people who affect society and history significantly, and to some extent perhaps history as we know it has in many ways been merely a byproduct of neurotic ambition.

Juuni Kokki has a similar fantasy setting, and is really the complimentary opposite to what is expounded in Berserk. In that anime, we actually see the protagonist learn what it means to be a benevolent leader, which is ultimately to be honest with yourself about your humanity, and accept the flaws and frailty that it entails - something Griffith completely failed to do. The irony is that Griffith must feel like he has obtained absolute power, but in truth he is still just a slave - to a childish notion of destiny.

I can honestly say that the ending was a little too brutal for my tastes. I hate what happens to Caska. I hate that Griffith succumbs to his demons and becomes evil. Any notion of justice is discarded in the process of really _REALLY_ driving home how evil Griffith has become. Even when Guts kills the king, it's just not enough. It's not satisfying - there's no salvation, no redemption. Griffith is worse than Shinji because he doesn't even try to look outside of his own fantasy - the culmination of his existential crisis is the deliberate desire to continue the wanton destruction of the people who believe in him. In the end we can only feel sorrow and remorse for everyone, including Griffith. Guts is of course a light in the darkness, but it's hard to feel happy for him considering how tragic a hero he becomes.
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 6:11 pm
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slippy (#46880)
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 And this is why I kept plugging Berserk to ya for the past year. Wink

I watched Berserk right about the time I was rereading the Illiad and the Orestia trilogy; the key thing in this view of the pre-Judiac/Christian universe is that there's not really a "good" and a "evil" in the mythology. Berserk is problematic (or genius) because its use of fantasy mirrors how the Greeks did their religious dramas; that is, the literal death and transformation is not merely an externalization, but the dramatic depiction of the characters' psychology.

This analysis is especially interesting to me because I started from the reverse assumption; that is, both Griffith and Gutts's natures were innately godlike -- the Griffith is the demiurge/reformer; Gutts is the will/enforcer -- and from there, both have to learn their humanity in the way Milton would do it. I suppose it heavily depends on how you interpret the determinism prologue; it makes me see all that happens after has merely the ritual which reveals our men. To do so, in my opinion, possibly undermines Berserk's dramatic construction. Is Berserk more Aesychylyan or Euripidean?

Using a traditional psychoanalysis of Griffith presumes a human banality and triteness of his destructive dream, which is just SO opposite of what I've seen the material. For example, I think your essay deconstructs the effect of the dream and his relationship with our dream. Whereas I see the dream itself as a neological riddle; what is really the "castle?"; what really is the dream but the void plundering all? You ask, why he does what does. I ask, what is he that he does?

I think your essay beautifully profiles Griffith as a fascist demogogue; a lot of what you say describes many of our great/mad leaders/dictators of the 20th century.

Hopefully I'll get back to this post sometime this weekend. Smile
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 12:02 am
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rossoline (#40078)
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 Hmm... I'm intrigued. This could be an opportunity for me to learn something (...as usual).

Obviously my take is rooted more in existentialist and psyche than classical content. But that's only natural since I'm not quite as versed in the latter. Anyway, I'm taking that partly from something I stumbled upon in the manga - I've included a jpg I pm'd to Mike to illustrate where I was pulling some of my interpretation from. I won't have to point out the obvious references - though I do have happy faces pointing to some of them (including three pointing to a double-helix-ish-swirl-of-demon-like-thingys). Perhaps the most telling thought-bubble to me though is the one at the very bottom left - 'you know that this place is terribly human'. It's also quite poignant to me that Griffith realizes that humans desire this - hell.

However, I've only read just these few pages from this volume (I couldn't resist at least a few). But I want to interpret the godlike entity with whom griffith is speaking in these pages as a collective ego brought to form as it has evolved through a type of historical good/evil (dark/light, healthy/unhealthy, etc...) dichotomy. Hence, the gods in Berserk were forged out of the fabric of a subconscious dialectic - though I'm not really sure how that stands in comparison with the classical notion of pantheism. That's where I draw, roughly from Camus, the idea that since the god's are their 'creation', they can be negated. Or at least, to stop being anachronistic, I felt like it worked into my interpretation of the series that way. But, I honestly don't know where you're going with the classical perspective - though I'm fascinated because I can easily see how it could work.

For me, Griffith's dream is a type of historical culmination of this dialectic brought to form within him. I'd agree if you said that Griffith was chosen to be a god, at least in that his circumstances were preordained to his fate. I think Griffith is unique to the dream, but I don't think the dream is unique to Griffith - anyone could have potentially glimpsed it since it was drawn from subconscious universals of the time period.

In any case, I doubt I'll be willing to let go his humanity from the outset, if that's close to where you're going. I'd be happy to admit elements of a classically designed agon to Berserk though, so long as it doesn't rupture the notion of Griffith as human too drastically. Then, between the classical, existential, and psych references along with the demon-double-helix's, Berserk could potentially be one of the most ambitiously informed comic endeavors ever. At least, I certainly wouldn't mind that; never mind Oshii - here's Miura. Wink
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 6:12 am
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slippy (#46880)
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Quote:
In any case, I doubt I'll be willing to let go his humanity from the outset, if that's close to where you're going. I'd be happy to admit elements of a classically designed agon to Berserk though, so long as it doesn't rupture the notion of Griffith as human too drastically. Then, between the classical, existential, and psych references along with the demon-double-helix's, Berserk could potentially be one of the most ambitiously informed comic endeavors ever.


See, that's the wacky irony with Berserk. The Berserk manga-ka has said that his primary influences were Arnold flicks, Conan mythology, fantasy books, and the news. In other words, all of the philosophical aspects, all that stuff about determinism, free will, and kingdom-of-hell, to Berserk is kinda . . made . . .up . . as he went. Very Happy

Quote:
Hence, the gods in Berserk were forged out of the fabric of a subconscious dialectic - though I'm not really sure how that stands in comparison with the classical notion of pantheism. That's where I draw, roughly from Camus, the idea that since the god's are their 'creation', they can be negated. Or at least, to stop being anachronistic, I felt like it worked into my interpretation of the series that way. But, I honestly don't know where you're going with the classical perspective - though I'm fascinated because I can easily see how it could work.


See, the interesting thing is your reference points about subconscious dialectic and manifestation is pretty similar to the argument I was actually making with Haibane Renmei and the way its natural world was "formed" by the meaning Rakka assigned to it. Whereas with Berserk, this time, I'm saying that the manga-ka is really using Griffith and Gutts to describe the true nature of our universe -- or rather, the state of our sociological evolution -- whereby their mutual godlike status is a focal point for the transcendent forces at play. In other words, Berserk is sort of a riff on naturalistic pantheism. Griffith reaches Godhood as a searcher, not a despot. He claims to be a leader but in truth he was a old-school magician obsessed with the forces that created man and haunt their dreams.

I sure hope Mike is enjoying this. You and I are about to hijack the Berserk thread. Wink
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 7:51 am
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rossoline (#40078)
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Quote:
See, that's the wacky irony with Berserk. The Berserk manga-ka has said that his primary influences were Arnold flicks, Conan mythology, fantasy books, and the news. In other words, all of the philosophical aspects, all that stuff about determinism, free will, and kingdom-of-hell, to Berserk is kinda . . made . . .up . . as he went.


That's almost too incredible. In a way, if that's the case, I'm almost even more taken aback by the whole thing.

Quote:
Whereas with Berserk, this time, I'm saying that the manga-ka is really using Griffith and Gutts to describe the true nature of our universe -- or rather, the state of our sociological evolution -- whereby their mutual godlike status is a focal point for the transcendent forces at play. In other words, Berserk is sort of a riff on naturalistic pantheism.


I actually agree completely; In fact, I'm actually really happy to see you write that. It throws a light not only here, but also a little on the Haibane thread.

Anyway, I think I obviously misrepresented my thoughts in my last post. You'll notice that in my first post I never touched on anything close to dialectics. In fact, I really see Berserk, perhaps inadvertently, as quite a severe criticism of dialectics, and was using the imagery along those lines.

As it were, I was really surprised to see what I thought was just that type of deconstructive metaphor played out in the manga, which is why I followed it. When I read those pages, I felt like Miura was using those archaic notions of dialectics to get at the heart of more contemporary sociological issues, while simultaneously deconstructing itself as a dialectical proposition. That was why I was interested especially in the double-helix imagery, because I felt like he was alluding to something beyond his own premises, while trying to maintain an exterior metaphor. The fantasy setting I think calls for dialectics outwardly, but subtextually plays as an extended metaphor for social constructionist or perhaps even postmodern ideas.

Going with my psychological profile of Griffith, I was originally toying with the idea that we could level a certain remark against Hegelian dialectics and Jungian psychology - namely, that the 'world spirit' or 'collective unconscious' must be overwhelmingly neurotic, so to speak, because of the way it manifests through these types of power mongers. Of course, I'm not taking that literally (or even too seriously), but rather as kind of a playful (or cynical) deconstructive remark. Which I'm fairly certain is something Hegel never considered, as he held Napoleon in high regard. In fact, I kinda think Hegel's own ambition to become a world renowned philosopher and his idealization of Napoleon probably betrays that about himself as well - and he also had a huge effect on history.

So yeah, I definitely agree that Berserk is more or less sociological. I was playing with dialectics, but I'm actually even starting to think that maybe a simulation and simulacra approach may have been more effective to what I was trying to get at, in how Griffith's dream is a desire for socially constructed exchange values. In fact, he constructs his persona solely on semiotic standards, while trying to erase his 'true' self.
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 4:34 pm
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slippy (#46880)
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 Damn, this thread is great. Just had to say that. I'll see if I can get to your first post later. Smile
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 5:14 pm
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Mike (#43833)
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 Re: Griffith's Ambition - An Interpretation. :spoilers:
I read your first post, a none of the following discussion... sorry... I only have time for Rosso's novel on Berserk, I'll get to the other comments tonight and tomorrow.

rossoline (#40078) wrote:
If this thread actually goes anywhere, I'm hoping there might be some evolution to this interpretation.

Well, it certainly seems to be going somewhere!

Quote:
It may be stating the obvious, but to me the underlying premise of Berserk basically resolves itself as a meditation on dreams. Not the kind you have at night obviously, but ambitions, and the positive and negative effects that can be associated with them.

When you said this, the first thing that came to my mind was the Bondfire of Dreams episode.

Quote:

To somewhat briefly touch on how the series deals with the concept of ambition from the other characters perspectives, Corkas says this in episode 19:

Quote:
A man has to make many compromises in his life because of his personal limits and his responsibility to face up to reality. Only a child can be content with just a dream.


Did you watch the dubbed version? Or subtitles... I believe in the dubbed version it's somewhat different.. I dunno.. lemme check:
Quote:
Corkus:
A real man has a responsibility to face up to reality, recognize his limitations and to make compromises, but you're just too damn weak to admit that you've already exceeded your station.. and you look to the horizon praying for what will never be, becuase you're just a coward!
Guts:
What about you, are you the only man to never dream?
Corkus:
Meh, i've had enough, if you say another word I think I'll kill myself!

Interesting... yet they are very alike. You are right though, those words of advice are pretty good.

Quote:
Because of Guts lack of motive, throughout Berserk, there really is no hero, not until the very end. Heroics, but no hero. Guts eventually becomes a hero by becoming the opposite of Griffith. His ambition becomes to protect the innocent and drive out tyranny, whereas Griffith's ambition had always ultimately been to sacrifice the innocent for the sake of creating what would inevitably become his own tyranny. The irony is that that 'destiny' is no less circumstantial than Griffith's. But that's why I move away from the interpretation of their destinies as absolute.

I dunno if I agree with you here...
Guts does not become a hero who wants to protect the weak and drive out tyranny.... he battles the godhand out of rage initially.... although later in the manga he begins to change... His desire to get revenge on the God Hand is really what drives him to oppose them, not to protect the weak and drive out tyranny. He is almost consumed by his massive amount of rage as we see in the manga... he is almost lost within his rage that he forgets about what is truly important to pursue Griffith as Femto.

Well, that's all I have for now,

MIKE
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 7:41 pm
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rossoline (#40078)
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Quote:
Guts does not become a hero who wants to protect the weak and drive out tyranny.... he battles the godhand out of rage initially.... although later in the manga he begins to change... His desire to get revenge on the God Hand is really what drives him to oppose them, not to protect the weak and drive out tyranny. He is almost consumed by his massive amount of rage as we see in the manga... he is almost lost within his rage that he forgets about what is truly important to pursue Griffith as Femto.


Yeah, I can see that. I'm really anxious to catch up with the manga. If Guts primary motivation is rage or revenge, I can see how that maybe fits in with Slippy's interpretation of him as a kind of classical tragic hero.

Quote:
Did you watch the dubbed version? Or subtitles...


I watched both for that part to compare as you did, but I watched the subs throughout the series.


I just went out and bought Volume 3 (already read 2, but couldn't find 1) and just as I started reading I ran across this line from Puck, addressing a behelit bearer in disgusting demon form:

Puck wrote:
The truth is, you became this thing to run away from the pain in your own heart... to run away from yourself. You threw away your humanity. If anyone is a fragile human, it's you.


I mean, yeah, I'm once again taking dialogue out of context, but this really speaks to how I view Griffith. I really do view the dream as, like you say, a kind of weak self-serving banality. However, that certainly doesn't mean that I write Griffith off as merely that. I agree that he's a searcher; a philosopher knight of sorts that is trying to identify his own threads of destiny. What I would question is whether or not he ever truly did. I kind of perceive his flight to hell as a failure as a human on his part.

Anyway, I should probably stop for now, until I really get your side of the story. I am enthusiastic about this one.
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 11:43 pm
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Thomas(akaTammo) (#57694)
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 That thread is greatly intruiguing!!

I very recently finished watching Berserk anime, and yet I haven't read the manga, so I base my opinions solely on anime.

For now, I'll try to address the very first post here, yet I'll desperately try to find more time to did the rest too. :-) They are too good to be left out. :-)

Damn. Where were You guys when I finished watching Berserk as a first from my anime friends and I had to bite my tonuge out so to not spoil it for them? Where were You, when I desperately needed to discuss this masterpiece with anyone? I seriously considered talking to a mirror!! :-P

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We see him at one point contemplate a simple life, but he ultimately can't be contented with that. To me that is one of the few moments when he actually tries to look at himself as a real person, but out of fear he quickly dispels any such notion. We can assume he has never had healthy mutually reciprocal relationships with family and friends through which he could meaningfully learn to identify himself through others love for him. As a result he has externally crafted himself as the very essence of strength and power, but inwardly he is emotionally very weak.


Is he really? On the contrary Rossoline!

He in fact is perceiving emotions as a way of gaining his goals! He uses them extremely well! Griffith is one of the best villains... best characters in anime I've seen! Gretly skilled manipulator, charismatic to the point of owning other people. He was the guy who said "I own You" to Guts in such a way I had no troubles believing it. Unlike many other characters, he doesn't try to be charming. His magnetism affects anyone around him. Including the viewer.

The only weak part of Griffith IMO is his loneliness. For all of his life he's been alone. There were only weaker around him. That changed when Guts changed and severed himself from Griffith's dream, thus shattering the very world Griffith lived in. Griffith was badly excited about Guts WANTING to leave, to the point he decided to kill him (if he isn't mine, his life is forfeit!). When Guts LEFT... now THAT was a blow.

Griffith IMO never really met someone equal. That was his weakness. He wasn't used to being weaker, or being equal, to accept help that wasn't coming thanks to his own doings and charisma, but rather out of friendship and/or pity/sympathy.

I also assumed he never had real frienships, that he never could realize himself through others, or identify himself by their love.

I don't know what I think about Your idea that his dream was a false image, created out of need to be SOMEONE. And if someone then why not the king... yet I can clearly see where You got it from. For me it was a dream quite normal... fitting for a man like him. When You meet Griffith You instinctively know (one of the greatest feats Berserk anime achieves) he is different, special, great. Thus when I learned his dreams I wasn't so stupefied like Guts was. His casual manenr of mentioning it as obvious thing, and my image of him resulted in... hesitationed agreement. "Yes... if it's Griffith... it's possible. If it's him... it's all right. Fitting. What would satisfy a man like him if not that?" The more I pondered the thought the more fitting it was.

Yet, Your words, Rossoline cary great dose of truth.
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I'm not certain whether we can rightfully deduce that Griffith's self-image is either a byproduct or a basis of his loss of true identity. Rather, it's probably a fusion of both.
Most likely it is so, if we assume he had such childhood You described.

I also am craving for more light shed on his past, because from anime I have only the scene where demons are tempting him, and that's hardly reliable.

Quote:
Mike asked in another thread if Griffith was really a bad person. I think Griffith is, more or less, a product of circumstance. As mentioned, he probably had a desperate childhood similar to Caska's. Also I would think that receiving the behelit along with the witches prophecy probably had a big impact on him. But I wonder how legit the prophecy was; I'm tempted to see the witch as akin to the oracle in the Matrix - kind of doling out self fulfilling prophecies. After all, we clearly see in the end that Griffith has the ability to turn back, the demons make it clear to him that his destiny must ultimately be the result of his own free will. It's made very clear that he has a choice, and that succumbing to his demons (literally and figuratively speaking) is a product of his own volition. Each episode starts out with an epigraph about destiny. I think this is destiny in the sense that we are inevitably restricted to our cultural and ecological inheritance mixed with our inherent potentialities, and in the case of Berserk, a bit of divine intervention. In this way Griffith plays out a destiny. The thing about being human though is that we have the ability to rise above circumstance, to negate the gods and destiny, and to make our own destinies through our own choices. Griffith has the chance, but ultimately fails to do this. He blindly plays out his role without ever seriously questioning whether he, and certainly not if anyone else was really better off for it.


Now that's an interesting passage!
I haven't met that thread yet (Berserk forum IS big, You know), so I will take the liberty of answering it here.

I totally discarded the beginning of Berserk. And I still do. Having observed people like Griffith and Guts on a daily baisis such words are fakes. I can hardly believe the words about man that cannot even control his own will. Yet the closer to the end, the harder it was NOT to take them seriously. While it's indeed Griffith's free will that caused the gates of hell opening, was he really able to make any other choice?

Griffith wasn't a 'bad' person per se. While he shared many features Your average charismatic politician has, most important of them being classifiyng others into tools and enemies, he had the inner faith in his superiority. This is where i wholeheartedly agree with Rossoline. Griffith never HAD friends, never HAD equals. Thus he clearly was off limits to any criticism whatsoever... until Guts came. We can see it greatly in one of my favouite scenes - second duel. Caska is trying to stop them, and Judeau has a great monologue about how she changed. Her change is a result of Griffith's and Guts changes. Griffiths is no longer off-limits... because Guts decided to become 'someone like him'.

That is what pisses of Corkus, who noticed deep inside his subconciousness that it was possible from the very beginning. That is what makes Caska so distrusting in the beginning. They both knew a rival appeared... and that this rival was more than they were. For this one, Griffith was ready to bleed.

FOr me, Griffith firstly decided he was to be king. THEN he found Behelit and BECAUSE of the story it had and it's funny name he decided to take it. For me that's how it had been. It's all natural - Griffith knows he is superior to others, so he has to have greatest dream of them all. And he... unlike them... is meant to achieve it.

So is he a bad person? No. He uses his tools, and destroys his enemies, in a world where no one is equal to him. He plays in the playground. Do You mind when You waste one of Your toys? Of course. Are You 'bad' because of it? No.

And so is Griffith a good person? No as well. Because by the end of the series he had this one uniqe chance to meet his equal, and to have his friendship. And he blew it. He had potential of changing people. I was hoping from the very moment that CHarlotte would have grown the spine because of Griffith. She had. Not enough, and too late. For me that could have been life for the guy.

Griffiths fails as a man, because of what was his reason of greatness. His loneliness and lacks of equals. And his realization of it made foundation of his own world - which broke when Guts left. Thus he wasn't the usual self since then. He wasn't used to being NOT alone. And he feared the implications. Zodd foretold Guts this: "if this man's ambitions snaps, You will die".

Bein NOT so special anymore, being NOT the only one fit, for the first time tasting fear of BEING SURPASSED... that is what made his humane part collapse. And that is where he went 'bad'. Because in the end, he is stricte 'bad person'. And it was driven very very hard home with his rape on Caska in front of Guts.
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 11:59 am
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