"Poor Grendel!" the lonely hypocrite

          John Gardner opens Grendel with an image of an old ram minding his own business and staring intently into the distance. Grendel characterizes this ram as “stupidly triumphant” (5), in the way that it ignores Grendel completely. Hating this treatment, Grendel stomps and yells and even throws large rocks at the ram, but it doesn’t budge. This irritates Grendel to no end, because it’s tells the story of his sad life: being either ignored or feared by all creatures. The ram’s apathy represents the detachment Grendel feels from the world and all the creatures that inhabit it. When Grendel asks bold questions about his existence, he is met by the unresponsiveness of the sky, which “ignores [Grendel], forever unimpressed” (6). Like the ram, the sky symbolizes all the forces that isolate Grendel; in turn, he is tormented by the futility of a purposeless, lonely, and charge-less life.

          The dispassion Grendel encounters in the natural world contributes to his view that life is unnecessarily harsh. He views animals as stupidly simple in their joyful repetition of tasks, such as mating and growing, year after year. However, Grendel’s criticism of the mechanical actions of the “brainless budding trees, these brattling birds” (6) around him are juxtaposed with his own, repetitive deeds of murder. Whenever he kills a Dane at the mead hall, the action is mindless, just like the mating of rams or the growing of grass. Grendel is aware that he is trying to fool himself “with thoughts that I am more noble” (6). Anguished, conflicted, and confused, Grendel searches for meaning in a world that he wants to both abandon and enter.

          Of course, Grendel isn’t entirely alone: he has his mother. Although she is described as miserable and lethargic, Grendel’s mom might actually be in better shape than Grendel, in the way that she refuses to dwell on the “dusty mechanical bits of her miserable life’s curse” (11). But, seeing as Grendel’s mom is entirely incommunicable, she cannot properly articulate to her young son the occasional necessity of apathy. Frustrated by extreme loneliness, Grendel assumes the archetype of a crazy old man who yells at unassuming pigeons in the park.

Despite his frequent outbursts directed at the sky, Grendel is very aware that what he feels may not be genuine anger. For example, Grendel says, “I toy with shouting some tidbit more – some terrifying, unthinkable threat, some blackly fuliginous riddling hex – but my heart’s not it” (10). Grendel fakes powerful emotions in an effort to feel something, anything; he would rather feel flares of artificial rage than acknowledge that he numb of all feeling. In fact, a slight tweaking of the Lumineers’ song “Stubborn Love” matches Grendel's scenario rather well:

It's better to feel pain, than nothing at all
The opposite of life’s indifference

Now, George Willard employs a very similar concept in “An Awakening” (what is a blog post without a connection to Winesburg, Ohio?). Like Grendel, George is also an adolescent male who has trouble deciphering his personal role – or lack thereof – in the grand scheme of existence. Ceaselessly racking his own brain for answers, George walks the streets at night and shouts “words without meaning, rolling them over his tongue and saying them because they were brave words, full of meaning” (An Awakening, 155). Similarly, Grendel tries to prove to himself that he is capable of having emotion by screaming angry, impassioned words to the skies. Exaggerating his emotions is Grendel’s way of affirming that he is a sentient being. In this sense, Grendel tries to be more human, despite the fact that he outwardly ridicules the lunacy of human emotions. 

Fish scare me, but so does growing old and ugly

Mirror

by Silvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Fish are fast – much quicker and smoother swimmers than humans, who power through water with calculated strokes and breaths. Ubiquitously, they bullet past us, around us, and underneath us; the sea is their terrain, and fish know exactly how to navigate its waters. Humans, on the other hand, do not. Wading hip-deep in unclear water, I feel alarmed, taunted, and teased, when a fish brushes against my unsuspecting leg. It’s as if the creature’s saying, ‘I know you can’t see me from up there, that you’re basically blind. Why don’t you do yourself a favor and leave?’ By comparing a woman’s fear of senility to a “terrible fish”, Sylvia Plath delivers maximum impact at the end of her poem. Like the alien fish whose unblinking eyes inch closer and closer to my paranoid body, the concept of growing old and ugly is an unwelcome, nagging, and utterly irrational fear for many women.

Now, I’d bet money that ‘fear’ and ‘apprehension’ are AP exam-worthy ‘tone’ words for this timeless poem; although it was written fifty years ago, “Mirror” continues to be relevant to our glossy, airbrushed world. Told from the honest perspective of a mirror, the piece pinpoints the crippling insecurities of girl- and womanhood. “Unmisted by love or dislike”, the frank reflection of the mirror agonizes the woman who stares so intently at it. Through the mirror, she might see a wrinkle, a gray hair, a pimple, a frown line – all of which fade away in the presence of “those liars, the candles or the moon.” The lights cast by the moon and candles symbolize romance as much as they do deception. The woman knows this. No matter how many times lovers and friends tell her she is beautiful, she assumes that they do not know enough about her, the ‘true’ her. Their compliments are as ill-defined as candlelight is on her features and as fickle as promises made by ‘lovers’ under the moon.

In an effort to differentiate the real from the sugar-coated, the woman trusts only the mirror that is “silver and exact....not cruel, only truthful.” But no matter how truthful the mirror is, it cannot speak to the woman. If we really wanted to be technical, we’d see that nothing would be beautiful or ugly, black or white, right or wrong, good or bad, trite or fresh, in a view that is 100% 'true' . Everything would just be. A view that has zero preconceptions does not hold an opinion of any kind; therefore, a reflected image only means something – anything – if someone's there to interpret it. The irony of the poem is that the woman turns to the mirror for an unbiased perspective, only to batter it with her own, critical judgment. She seeks validation from a mirror that holds no opinions, thereby setting herself up to be disappointed, time and time again, by her own preconceived notions of herself. 

Art isn't a privilege; it's a necessity.

As a female, I’ve always prided myself in having an interest in Science. I feel like there isn’t enough support for girls who want to pursue careers in math/science/technology, and I want to be part of the change that is this generation (I never said this blog post wouldn’t be cheesy. Take this as a warning). But even though I dream of being an oncological researcher one day, I can’t ignore the fact that my interests in the arts also define me. For years, I’ve been slightly embarrassed by my love for reading and writing and music, because I felt like it was just too stereotypical girl. It fit the gender roles I loathed far too well: little boys play with trucks, little girls tend to ‘crying’ baby dolls; teenage boys learn to solve the world’s problems, teenage girls write poems about their feelings; grown-up boys hold a briefcase, grown-up girls hold Windex. I detested the prospect of seeming less intelligent than a male, because I would rather read a book than solve a Calculus problem.

In recent months I’ve realized the utter idiocy of this insecurity. All my life, I’ve been told that scientific and mathematical knowledge are the avenues to actually making a tangible difference in this world. From the invention of the light bulb, the steam engine, the telephone, who can argue that careers in numbers change the world? But, I felt like I was missing some integral part of the equation. Does the development of civilization depend only on mechanical calculations, or do the softer sides of our brains play an equal role?

These questions had lingered in the recesses of my mind for years, but did not come to fruition until I heard Professor Cook-Gailloud deliver a presentation dealing with the processing of language and learning at Johns Hopkins University. She began her presentation with eight simple words: “Art is not a privilege; it’s a necessity.” She explained how the spread of language fostered communication and a sense of community among disparate people thousands of years ago, and how it continues to do so. Many evolutionary biologists, even, hold the view that a high level of communication between Homo sapiens led to the extraordinary development of cognitive intelligence that distinguishes our species from all others in the animal kingdom. Before humans had invented the wheel, men and women were producing cave paintings in an effort to understand the natural world that they belonged to; before the dawn of the Agricultural Revolution, people were singing and telling stories around fires, spiritually linking themselves to each other through the art produced by their own voices. The point I’m trying to make out of all this is that art precedes mechanics. If humans cannot sit and think and make sense of the world we live in – as our ancestors once did – our sense of purpose will cease to exist.

My encounter with Professor Cook-Gailloud helped me understand the vital importance of Literature as a means for expression; instead of being ashamed of my fascination with the arts, I’ve come to truly embrace it. I realize that Science and Language have similar aims: to make sense of the world. While Physics achieves this purpose through means of formulas to explain concrete occurrences, Language describes both the abstract and the tangible through words and ideas.

Suicide's Note by Langston Hughes

I’ve read my fair share of suicide literature, trust me, I have. Of course, such a statement is generally bound to raise suspicion…but I don’t think my fascination with people who are about to jump off the ledge has anything to do with a personal desire to do the same. On the contrary, I simply find it interesting to see how suicidal speakers are portrayed by their writers. Very rarely does the speaker actually seem crazy (at least, not as far as I can tell). In Jay Asher’s 13 Reasons Why, Hannah Baker – the girl who leaves behind a set of audio tapes for the 13 people who pushed her to commit suicide – arranges her death in a way that would make many wedding planners proud. Hannah thinks so far ahead as to record herself speaking for hours on end, so that these 13 little lovelies will know exactly what prompted her decision to die. She is practical, she is calculated, she is even a little bit robotic.

Now, Ellen Hopkins’ Impulse takes a very different approach. The poetic novel concerns three teenagers whose lives intersect in a psychiatric hospital after each of them attempt suicide. By keeping each attempter alive to explain what pushed him/her to the brink of self-destruction, Hopkins gives a very human angle to suicide. Told from three different perspectives (all in a first-person point of view), Impulse is far more introspective than 13 Reasons Why is. The narrators in Impulse are paradoxically compassionate in their attempts to leave the world – and all its inhabitants – forever.

While flipping through my Perrine's textbook, a poem by the name of "Suicide's Note" stuck out to me. By simply judging the work by its title, I assumed the speaker’s tone would be on one or the other end of the spectrum: calculated and robotic (like Hannah’s in 13 Reasons Why) or heartfelt and emotional (like the trio’s in Impulse). What I found in Langston Hughes’ poem defied either expectation.  

     The calm, 

     Cool face of the river

     Asked me for a kiss. 

By asking the speaker for a kiss, the river is personified as the speaker’s lover. To an extent, this comparison is eerily appropriate. As her lover (let’s assume the speaker is a woman, for simplicity’s sake), the river is requesting the woman to jump into its depths and spend the rest of her life there. Just like two newlyweds - who plan to live the rest of their days together, to die in each other’s company – the girl makes a promise to the river.

Although one would assume that a reference to a lover (inanimate or not) would make the poem more personal, it actually makes the speaker seem less tied to reality. Like Hannah Baker, the speaker in Hughes’ poem sees life differently after whatever experiences have prompted her to kill herself. The personification of the river as the woman’s lover implies that the woman cannot find love or comfort or any form of desire in the real world. The suffocation beneath the “calm, cool face of the river” is the only solace the speaker can find, and it is an apathetic escape from the frenzied emotions of the real world.

What took me by surprise, more than anything else, was how tiny the poem is. In twelve words, the poem sums up the message that takes Hopkins and Asher hundreds of pages to get across: suicide is a hot, complicated mess.

Let's start a book club

I read Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five a few weeks ago and fell in love with the rhythmic clarity of its sentences and the understated cynicism of its author. However, the more time I spend in AP Lit, discussing the significance of the boundless themes and motifs in Winesburg, Ohio, I can't shake the feeling that I haven't sufficiently wrapped my mind around Slaughterhouse. 

Similar to Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Slaughterhouse Five consists of fragmented stories. But, instead of being about the many people and faces in a small town, all of Slaughterhouse's stories revolve around the clear protagonist, Billy Pilgrim. Although there are many phrases that repeat in different contexts of the novel, one in particular caught my attention: "blue and ivory." These three words are used to describe disparate situations in Billy's life. A middle aged Billy's bare feet are "ivory and blue" as he sits at the ancient type writer in his house. About twenty years earlier, a younger Billy notices the "blue and ivory claw" of a hand that clings to the vent in his miserable boxcar that travels to a German prisoner of war center. Soonafter, the feet of the dead hobo who had sat by Billy in the boxcar are described as "blue and ivory."

By repeating this phrase, among others - such as "mustard gas and roses" and "nestled like spoons" -, Vonnegut intertwines the fragmented stories in holistic, albeit anachronistic, way. There is no doubt that each story is connected to the other, and I really wish we had read Slaughterhouse Five in class so that we could discuss all the ways Billy's experiences specifically fit together.

Taking AP Lit has made me appreciate the principles of open discussion more than I ever thought I would. I've been a bookworm since I preschool, but I always regarded reading as a solitary activity. In elementary school, I never saw the purpose of the regimented reading groups we were sorted into that served to enhance our reading and verbal skills. In middle school, reading groups ceased to exist as teachers tried to instill in us the principle of taking responsibility for our work and reading outside of class. Even in AP Lang last year, class discussions seemed superficial and pervasive to my understanding of the work. It wasn't until out recent discussions of Winesburg, Ohio this year in AP Lit that I truly realized how amazing open dialogue can be in a room full of insightful people who have all read the same work. Talking about "Strength of God" - a story in Winesburg, Ohio that I had paid very little mind to the first time I read it - completely changed my perspective about discussing books. By seeping in the diverse perspectives of my classmates, I developed a take on the story that completely differed from my original, significantly shallower interpretation.
Doing so gave me a better view of the individual story, and a more complete understanding of Winesburg, Ohio, Modernism, and Literature as a whole.

The grotesque pursuit of perfection

My voice teacher tells me  that I think too much when I sing.

Of course, this isn't really anything new to me; the people who know me best have no problem identifying my slight case of OCD. At the age of six, I was first labeled a perfectionist by my loving and well-intentioned TAG teacher, Ms. Neal. At a parent-teacher night, Ms. Neal actually told my mom, "Trisha is so bright, but she spends all of her time trying to make her work perfect." And it's true. I've lived most of my life by a perfectionist's philosophy. Whether it's writing a blog or penning an article, writing is one of the more excruciating tasks I am faced with. I loathe the Scattered Writer's cycle of type-erase-type-erase, but I find myself falling into it unashamedly the majority of the time. I find writing to be daunting, because I know that what I produce will not only be subject to the scrutiny of others, but also to the more critical scrutiny of myself.

I'm starting to realize, though, that being obsessed with personal satisfaction and perfection is actually making for lower quality work.

"Just sing," my voice teacher says. "You already know the pitches, the rhythm, the words. If you stop thinking about what you already know how to do, you'll actually sound better. You'll be more expressive." Of course, these words apply to more than just singing. The purpose of writing isn't to state things perfectly - it's to make a point. Writing is an opportunity to be your own person by communicating the perspective that only you exactly have.

After reading Winesburg, Ohio, I'm beginning to realize how crucial the art of communication is. In "The Book of the Grotesque", grotesques are identified as people who dedicate themselves to a particular philosophy, or philosophies, and shut out the rest of the world because of it. As the old man in the story recounts, "it was the truths that made the people grotesques...the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood" (17).

Now, the idea of embracing a new truth or ideal is not a bad one. It is each character's inability to communicate these truths with others, though, which pushes him or her into a state of chronic decay that is characteristic of the Grotesque lifestyle. Characters such as Wing Biddlebaum, Dr. Reefy, and Elizabeth Willard torment themselves by suppressing their own thoughts. Dr. Reefy puts all of his thoughts on paper, but allows them to crumble into small, round, paper pills in his pocket. Wing hides his hands - which used to be his chief source of communication before he was accused of molestation and banished from his hometown -, thus eliminating his primary means for expression. Elizabeth Willard rots away in her own home for the majority of her life, unhappy in her marriage, but unwilling to express these thoughts in any way, shape, or form.

To cut to the chase, I don't want to be a grotesque, or anything that resembles a grotesque too closely. My ability to put concrete thoughts on a page or expressive melodies into the air should not be obstructed by a silly fear of imperfection. When one word sounds dissonant in a line of many words, I'll morph my sentence to make that dissonance fit. When one note in a song doesn't quite fit the mood, I'll alter the mood of the next few measures to make for a more interesting piece.

Hands as an extension of ourselves

There is no concept of Gryffindor-like bravery or Slytherin-like malice in Winesburg, Ohio. The characters are not exceptionally honest or evil or tough, and it is impossible to assign a one-dimensional personality to any of them. This is not to say, however, that the characters are not exaggerated representations of ourselves. By magnifying the pitiable state of each story’s main character, Sherwood Anderson employs an unusual technique to show how the way we handle circumstances – both within and without of our control – shape our fate.

“Hands” for example, is a story about the fall of a once-enthusiastic and once-inspiring school teacher. The teacher, Adolph Myers, was banished from his own town on the charge that he molested one of his male students. Thrust out of his society, he was forced to assimilate into a new one – Winesburg, Ohio. Although Adolph was never obligated to tell the people of Winesburg about his life, he still suffered severe social consequences, because of his own confusion regarding his banishment. He is characterized as “forever frightened and best by a ghostly band of doubts” (19) and becomes a social outcast on this basis.

What I find particularly interesting about “Hands” is that the reader never knows if Adolph actually molested the child. Instead of definitively offering the reader the validity of the central conflict, the narrator leaves much of the story – and every story in the novel, for that matter – up to interpretation. On the other hand, the narrator has no problem with disclosing background details about the character. There is no hesitation in describing to the reader how Adolph’s hands were a fundamental part of his success as a school teacher.  “by the caress that was in his fingers he expressed himself….under the caress of his hands doubt and disbelief went out of the minds of the boys and they began also to dream” (23). In this way, Adolph used his hands as a means for inspiration; they helped him gather and fully-express his thoughts, thereby helping his students learn.

When Adolph leaves his town, he begins to fear his hands. If not for the fame of his communicative hands, the townspeople would not have been so quick to believe that Adolph was touching his students inappropriately.  After living in Winesburg for a year, Adolph is still uneasy with himself. He is described as “going timidly about and striving to conceal his hands. Although he did not understand what had happened he felt that the hands must be to blame” (24). As more years, and eventually decades, pass, Adolph’s discomfort increases. His hands are always in a frenzy, and they begin to develop a persona of his own. He even earns the name “Wing Biddlebaum” because of “[his hands’] restless activity, like unto the beating of the wings of an imprisoned bird” (20).

Instead of getting angry at this offensive name as one would expect, Adolph allows himself to become Wing Biddlebaum. He is still fearful of his hands, and this fear facilitates his newfound fear of humanity. Never again is he able to feel comfortable in society, because he is hyper-conscious of his hands and the history that accompanies them. When his hands betrayed him, his identity was lost. Biddlebaum’s hands had been his means for communication, and when he lost trust in his hands, he too lost trust in himself.    

How I fell into the trap of becoming a life-long reader

I was born in September - the month of sunset-colored leaves and mosquito bite-laden legs. The month that Green Day does not want to wake up from, and the month whose brisker winds assure us that Summer is truly over. All this being said, September is also the month that is one month too late for normal registration in this county’s school system.

When I was four years old, my mid-September birthday told administrators that I was two weeks too young to attend first grade with the other kids, who were almost, but not quite, my age. I was given a test on Vocab and Math skills to determine if I could simply skip Kindergarten and join the ranks of those who were within a year and two weeks older than me. Because my mom had taught me to read before I was four years old, and because my dad and I would practice adding and subtracting in the car at leisure, I passed both portions with flying colors.

Fast forward one school year, and I had completed the once-alien world of 1^st grade. I had learned to make friends with those in my grade, yet I could not shake this strange, perpetual fear of kids who were more than the standard one year and two weeks older than me. That summer, all changed when I met a girl named Ryan who I would one day call my best friend.  She lived across the street from me, and she had just graduated from 3rd grade. She was three years older than me, at least six inches taller (although it seemed like six feet at the time), and rode her bike around the neighborhood with elderly confidence. Although Ryan had never spoken a word to me, her age, height, and maturity left me absolutely terrified. It was actually my grandmother who forced me to talk to Ryan one day, when she noticed that I would run inside the house every time I saw the “girl on the bike.” At first, I had no idea what to say to someone so much older or wiser than myself. The pauses in our surface-level conversation were boundless, and I am sure that neither of us really wanted to talk to the other. It wasn’t until she mentioned her favorite book, Island of the Blue Dolphins, that our dialogue shifted from strained to slightly intrigued. I told her that I hadn’t read, or even heard of, the book, but that I loved to read. She (slightly snobbishly) informed me that the book is a Classic, and that it would be a disgrace if she did not let me borrow her copy.

From then on, our relationship grew. What began as a newly-graduated first grader borrowing books from her book-a-holic of a neighbor transformed into a friendship that is still going strong. If it were not for my mom who had planted the reading seed, or for Ryan who helped cultivate it by serving as a role model for my impressionable self, I doubt that my appreciation of books would have been so long-lasting. Because of these two women’s continued influence in my life, I have fostered a love of reading and the pursuit of knowledge. They are the reason why I have been able to find myself in words, and they are why I associate happiness with well-articulated emotions on a page. 

Why I'm the Creature's #1 Fan

From the winding words to the concentration of thought, emotion, and imagery on every page, Frankenstein was beautifully written.

But it was also a pain to read.

My copy consisted of 198 pages of small, neat print, and it took me two weeks to read. Two. Full. Weeks. By the time I had finished, it was ten minutes past midnight on a school night, and I was physically and emotionally drained. I read the last line and slammed my book shut. My pride at finally finishing the novel outweighed any desire I had to sit and think about the text once I was done. I didn’t so much as pick up another book to read for pleasure until five days after I had finished Frankenstein.

Later, I began to wonder why I was so willing to stop thinking about Victor, the Creature, and Captain Walton. It’s not that Mary Shelley did not relay powerful messages about the nature of mankind in the text; on the contrary, her words were a sobering and hard-hitting portrayal of loneliness and mankind’s obsession with beauty. The reason I found Frankenstein so excruciating to read is because it felt like Victor's accounts of his thoughts and feelings would never end. 

I did not, however, encounter the same problem with the Creature, which is why the book was not entirely lost on me. I pitied the Creature for six chapters as he told Victor of his life of abandonment, isolation, and unreciprocated violence; I smiled into the pages of my book when the Creature found Paradse Lost, Lives, and the Sorrows of Werter on the ground, because I knew that these books would teach the Creature to express his thoughts; I gasped aloud when Felix began beating the Creature, because I realized that this act could lead to a lifelong detestation of humanity on the Creature’s end. And it did.

I was extremely attached to the Creature throughout the entirety of the novel. By page 14, which was long before the Creature had even been mentioned, I was already contrasting the way society treats Victor with the way it would treat a “Monster.” Captain Walton’s description of Victor as “unequalled for clearness and precision… [and having] a facility of expression and a voice whose varied intonations are soul-subduing music” (14) infuriated me, because I knew Walton would never say the same about the Creature, regardless of the Creature’s eloquence or insight. The Creature would never be given the chance that Victor was entitled to, because of man’s inability to go beyond the surface it is unappealing enough to the eye.I realized later that the attachment I felt to the Creature was founded on the fact that he was still so new to the world; in a sense, the Creature was a blank slate, and his short-lived mind was never as contradictory or convoluted as Victor’s, who had been on the Earth for so much longer.

I think that I could have related with Victor a little bit more, if I had more of a sense of who he really was. My major issue with the writing of Frankenstein is that the reader rarely sees Victor’s raw interactions with the people around him. By this, I mean that there was not enough quotation mark-laden dialogue. When there is objective conversation, the reader is given more freedom to make an assumption of the character and walk away with her own assumption of who Victor was. I grew tired and felt stripped of my freedom as a reader when all I was given were Victor’s intimate thoughts and feelings. They reminded me of a secondary source – one that had been analyzed, modified, and blogged about (heh, heh) with a definite bias. Although I knew the details of Victor’s youth and the strong feelings that he associated with it, the story feels incomplete if I can’t read about Victor's surface-level reactions to the world and the people in it.

By the end of the book, I felt that what I knew about the two main characters, Victor and the Creature, was off-balance. I knew everything about the inside of Victor, but very little about how he projects himself to the world. I could deduct so much more about the Creature, because I knew how he thought, as well as how others perceived him. There’s a saying that no one is black or white and that we all consist of gray areas. There is no one on this world who is solidly good or bad, and the more you get to know a person, the harder it is to see them in one-dimension. If you start from the surface and dig your way down, you’re bound to find something you respect about them, or at least something you can relate to, even if you start out hating them. If all this is true, how can I help but take the Creature’s side?