Symbology in Berserk

Rather than forcing my wife to listen to me think out loud about Berserk, I thought I'd bring up some of my thoughts with other readers regarding the objects and what not in Berserk that Mirua creates..

Namely, one of the things that I've been most impressed with Miura about is that, as a storyteller (vs. a visual artist, which he is also obviously very skilled at) he is able to create such "loaded" objects. What I mean is that he creates a fantasy world where objects carry a lot of meaning. When people think of the One Ring in the Lord of the Rings, this is a similar example. People being used as batteries by the machines in the Matrix is another great example, as it creates a powerful metaphor for a particular view on capitalism and the "machine" of society. Mostly, I'm looking at things created by Miura that can be read both literally and figuratively.

The Behelit is the most obvious "symbolic" object in Berserk-- the desire for power incarnate and the cost the individual must pay to acquire it. But there are all sorts of other fascinating things too--

For example, we normally say that "people have their demons" after trying times, but Guts actually has to fight his demons in a physically manifested sort of way. And they literally feed on his fear and anger, the way a metaphorica/emotional demon would too.

The brand is also obviously a really central object. It's a lot like saying he's "Marked for death"-- but in truth, Guts and Casca are literally marked for death. I also thought it fascinating that the demon child nursed from the brand. I've been trying to get a handle on that one for a long time. Whatever the case, I found that image wonderfully disturbing.

Another example I had was Griffith actually becoming a demon in order to attain power, and sort of losing his soul in the process. Rather than it simply being metaphorical, as in a traditional story (like, say, in the "Godfather"), in Berserk it's wrapped into physical acts or objects.

I was recently rereading some older issues, and the other one that came to mind was the magic objects everyone has. I had never really found the whole sequence very interesting until I really clued in to the fact that Miura is basically making commentary on the emotional state of his characters through the magic objects they receive. Thus Farnese gets objects of silver, to protect, to act defensively rather than to attack. And I found it very interesting that Serpico has gotten the wind element to guide him. As if he wanted to be free but couldn't be, or that he is slowly recognizing that Farnese is moving away from him and that he is sort of being "let free" from her by default. Yet oddly enough, he's really in touch with the wind element. This was also really interesting to me, and I haven't been able to really figure out what I think about it yet.

Another example would be that Griffith is now literally (in phyical form) sort of the child of Guts and Caska (if I understood correctly that the demon child was the physical vessel for Griffith's return). Thus the sort of metaphorical truth that Griffith's strength really came from them, and that they were the two that were most important to be sacrifices is made into a literal sort of truth-- that his new self is bascially born from them, that in some way the helped to create the Griffith that we now know.

I'm sure there's room for lots of other readings, or perhaps some of them seem far fetched, but I've just found this very interseting as a reader and would love to get some other people's insights both into the objects I've already mentioned and other possibilities.
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
It's good to see analytical readers are out there still.

While your post aimed at analyzing symbology in Berserk, I think you touched on a much larger nervous system: the iceberg syndrome in Berserk. That is to say, the depth Miura hints at on the surface, but allows the reader to discover by diving deeper.

While Berserk certainly has some obvious symbols, the beherit and the brand are your best examples, some I don't think quite work.  The wind element's connection with Serpico seems a little farfetched.  Griffith doesn't necessarily "lose" his soul as much as it's transformed.  And, while Isidro's fire dagger certainly matches his personality, as a symbol it doesn't exactly probe the mind as much as the brand. 

Miura's power doesn't come from symbols, in my opinion, but in theme and recurrance.  Guts' constant and near hopeless struggle against Causality, the chasing of a dream, the bonfire attraction of ambition, the rise and fall of nations, none of these require elaboration or connection to metaphor. They are powerful in and of themselves. 

Furthermore, the spins Miura puts on clichéd fantasy situations, and the choices he is constantly making with the series, after 6 years, still suprise me and keep me here, waiting every 2 weeks.
 
Nice post with some interesting ideas, I may try and respond a little more directly to things you bring up when I have some more time.
 
Oh, I agree that some of them are a stretch-- the elemental stuff in particular.... I never try to make a whole complete/entire comparative analysis of a situation.... rather, I do it piece by piece. Thus, I agree that Isidoro's fire dagger means little to me metaphorically. It's just fun and simple. The way, say, Guts repeating crossbow is. I don't look deeper into it than to say that its a fun weapon. So yeah, some stuff just is... without being any deeper than that.

I disagree (for now, anyways) on the bit about the wind element's relationship to Serpico. Out of all the characters, his comments regarding the elemental spirits had the most depth, and related the most to his character/ made the most commentary on his character as of now. I think there's a lot of push and pull in Serpico right now, particularly about Farnese being let free and of Farnese letting him go/ moving on from their very .... entwined relationship. And also of him not really wanting to let go of her. The wind element seemed to speak to a lot of that turmoil to me. Maybe that's just me though.

I agree with you though Walter, in that Miura is a very good storyteller, and that that is a large part of what makes the story very very good. You could not read in to any of the things I've mentioned, and it's still a good story. Granted. I think though, that there's a lot of unprobed depth (iceberg effect, as you put it) that adds a lot to the reading of the series, if you want to go there-- weighting objects with more metaphorical meaning, symbology, etc. etc. I mean, Miura is writing on the knife's-edge of myth here, as well as fantasy, and myth works a lot with image and symbol. It allows you to talk about a lot of very complicated things without having to speak about them directly-- and that works wonders, since sometimes you can't really talk clearly about these issues-- they're too intricate, to paradoxical.

As for Griffith, I think we're disagreeing on more of a formality than anything. I agree-- he's been "transformed." I would just go farther and say he's been transformed into something basically inhuman (by normal standards anyways). Now that he's corporeal again, I think there's more wiggle room for disagreeing on whether or not he has a soul, but I'd say the whole Femto transformation was basically the equation of --

get power= lose ones humanity (or soul)

Oh, and there's also Gut's cutting away of the left hand too-- a common reoccuring mythological motif. Left hand= sinister side. Trying to free yourself from yourself. It's not that Guts is thinking that as he's doing it (cutting off the arm), but cutting off ones hand is a common mythological motif, and not so crazy to look into through that lense. Basically, cutting off ones arm (or having it cut off) if frequently looked at as a symbol of losing some of ones humanity (think Luke in Star Wars). Miura makes the situation more interesting by having Guts cut it off as an act of desperation for a loved one (which was brilliant), but the end result is the same for him-- he becomes sort of a madman after the eclipse, the killing machine. And his motivation may partly be out of love for Casca, but the result (the desire for revenge at all costs) dehumanizes him.

Right now we're seeing him go through a more humanizing faze, which is great, as he tries to find himself again, but I think there will come a time when he'll have to meet up with Griffith again, and we'll see the old anger rise up and take over like before (basically, the beast taking some sort of larger control of him). I think Gut's rage is sort of like an alchoholic's relationship to drink-- once an alcholholic, always an alchoholic, no matter how long you've been on the wagon. But that's dipping into speculation I suppose.

Also, Guts having only one eye-- same thing. He loses the eye and basically becomes a man who has (both literally and metaphorically) myopic vision-- he sees only one thing-- revenge. It's only been recently that he's sort of coming back into his humanity. If he'd been just born with one eye, it wouldn't have meant much-- but losing it because of the eclipse, and then only wanting revenge (i.e. having a type of myopic vision) after the eclipse makes the eye take on a more significant meaning. Guts has spoken more than once about how he can only see "one thing" through that lost eye-- the events of the eclipse. Having only one eye isn't just about having only one eye. Back in the beginning (vols 1-3) it was, but once we learned how it happened, the eye takes on deeper significance. It becomes symbolic of Gut's attitude towards life after the eclipse.

Mostly, some of these are readings I've been sort of carrying around with me for a while. In me ol' head, so to speak. But I think they have some creedence.

Mostly though-- I'm just interested in getting some other readings/nuances on the whole thing from other people.
 
Not to get off topic, but...
Have you noticed that along with the use of symbols, Miura seems to pay homage to classical literature at times? I could be wrong, but I have found quite a striking similarity to the Divine Comedy, among some other classical works. His drawing inspiration from medieval architecture is a given, and I was just curious as to whether anyone more enlightened than myself had found other literary hints being dropped? I can almost guarantee you Miura has read some W.B. Yeats as well, because of his accurate representation of the Irish (and to an extant Germanic) folklore. Well, he may have also just played a lot of D&D and read Tolkien, thereby absorbing it vicariously (i.e. Kazushi Hagiwara). Again, sorry to get off topic, but this inane rambling of mine hardly merits an additional thread.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Not replying to the whole thing because it would take me too much time. To give a quick "critical" opinion, I would say that your analysis is overall pertinent though some of the comparisons you make are obvious and I think intended to be reckoned by the readers. However, some of your examples seem a bit far-fetched to me, like if you were trying to see too much into these things, and some tend to misconceptions.

That kind of thread is always nice to see anyway. :)

QuestionMark said:
As for Griffith, I think we're disagreeing on more of a formality than anything.

A "formality" that is far from being negligible though.

QuestionMark said:
I agree-- he's been "transformed."  I would just go farther and say he's been transformed into something basically inhuman (by normal standards anyways).

Let's be clear here, his ego, his psyche, his "soul" (defined as: "the immaterial part of a person") was transformed, corrupted, changed into Femto (a spiritual being). Yet even at the last moment he chose what he would become, and one could argue that your statement of him being "inhuman" only supports itself by the nature of Femto's being (superior to mere mortals), and not by the lost of inherent humans traits: hate, jealousy/revenge (rape), cruelty, doubt, envy, etc. That would be reinforced by the fact that Femto's goal is the same as Griffith's was, or that Griffith had pretty much always been unnaturally cold, scheming, and devoid of emotions. These are 2 different applications of the word, that don't have the same context.

QuestionMark said:
Now that he's corporeal again, I think there's more wiggle room for disagreeing on whether or not he has a soul

Femto incarnated himself into a new Griffith. Griffith's soul/ego/pysche is Femto (Femto being the "corrupted soul/ego" of the original Griffith).

QuestionMark said:
but I'd say the whole Femto transformation was basically the equation of -- get power= lose ones humanity (or soul)

We're not in a Faustian dilemna here, Griffith had to sacrifice something, and it wasn't his "soul", it was what he held most dearly to his heart: his comrades, the Band of the Hawks. Then his soul/ego was taken to the Abyss, where he met the Idea of Evil, and was bestowed supernatural powers. My point here is that humanness and soul aren't synonyms, and that if Griffith's soul had been lost, then he would be "dead" (to be specific: in Berserk, souls join the "Vortex of souls" when someone dies, see Wyald, the Snail count or Vargas) and Femto would be an altogether different being.

So you could make a different parallel here, in the vein of "power corrupts", implying that great powers and ambition never come without evil or something like that.

bph said:
I can almost guarantee you Miura has read some W.B. Yeats as well, because of his accurate representation of the Irish (and to an extant Germanic) folklore.  Well, he may have also just played a lot of D&D and read Tolkien, thereby absorbing it vicariously (i.e. Kazushi Hagiwara).

Well, he didn't necessarily read Yeats, but he certainly knows a lot about old European folklore and mythologies (not just European either, see the Kushan thread), that's a given, and I very highly doubt him to have based himself on Tolkien or *gasp* D&D, as his depiction of elves for example is a lot closer to the original tales than Tolkien's (i.e. Puck is a good example of a folklore elf, name included, while Legolas is uhh...).

You might also want to know that the Hagiwara mention actually offended me.
 
Aazealh, I would agree that some of the things I pulled up are obvious... I brought up things like the Behelit and the Brand as general supportive material for the concept of the use of symbols in Berserk in general. I don't think I'm really breaking any ground on that. I guess my point is that Miura references many things, both historical and mythological, and although he doesn't tend to draw direct paralells-- i.e the Kushan (according the the Kushan thread) are much like the historical Kushan's, and yet I think it would be false to presume he's making some sort of commentary on the actual Kushan's, or that he's pretending to place Berserk in a very specific historical/geological context-- still, even though he doesn't bring in direct paralells, I think we as readers, tend to draw certain conclusions from the Kushan related info he gives us-- we see pictures of deities we recognize, see weapons that are known objects and that have some history about them (this one is more specialized than that one, and requires more training, etc. etc.) and then we infer information from that. Information he doesn't necessarily tell us.

I just think it's the same with a number of the myth/symbol motifs he's using. It seems (to me) a reasonable exercise to read into a man with only one eye and one arm as the hero, given the context. Or the behelit or the brand. Beyond that, I simply wanted to put out there how much I love Miura's way of ...."physically manifesting" metaphorical/emotional things-- much like the demons that are made real (but that would normally be emotional demons a person was facing). So, I suppose part of the thread is purely fanboy stuff.

I still hold by the fact that Miura seemed to be making some commentary on the characters when he had them be given a specific element/magical object to work with. He tends to work on a level that is deeper than just the surface. And I thought, as an example, that the Farnese/silver for protection versus real, honest to goodness offense was both fitting and interesting. A commentary on how much she had changed since the Holy Knights. That still doesn't seem such a stretch to me, but maybe we'll just end up disagreeing on that. No bigee. :)

I guess I'm most curious what you guys thought was a stretch-- both Walter and Aazealh,you've suggested that, and I'd be curious to see what they were.

As for teh whole Griffith-- soul or no soul discussion-- "soul" may have been the wrong word. What you are describing I would generally describe as a person (metaphorically) losing their soul. I guess since in the Berserk world there is a whole Void into which the dead souls enter, then Griffith hasn't technically lost his soul. Fair enough. The arguement was mostly that yes, "power corrupts" and that in the Berserk world you don't simply become a mean guy that rules people with an iron fist-- instead can be made physically manifest (sometimes) and you can become an Apostle or one of the God hand (which I would describe as demons, in a general sense). Basically, my point was that Miura tends to make physical... things that are typically not-- thus Griffith goes through a transformation, that occurs before our eyes, into another being, essentially, as he attains power. And yeah, that is essentially a Faustian drama, regardless of whether the devil actually gets to take his soul to hell with him or not. The dilemna is essentially the same-- he's paying a great price for the power he acquires.

The soul/no soul thing I guess wasn't that important to me, in regards to what I was trying to actually say about Miura physically "manifesting" things, and loading those objects or actions with a lot of deeper metaphorical meaning.

Also, sorry these posts have been so long-- I just want to make sure I make myself as clear as I can, to avoid misconceptions as much as possible, before they happen.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
QuestionMark said:
I guess my point is that Miura references many things, both historical and mythological, and although he doesn't tend to draw direct paralells-- i.e the Kushan (according the the Kushan thread) are much like the historical Kushan's

Well, I agree about the historical and mythological statement, but actually the Kushans in Berserk aren't really like the real Kushans (issued from a nomadic Chinese tribe, Kanisha was Zoroastrian and then Buddhist, and their empire during the golden age included Afghanistan and Pakistan and only went as far as reaching the Indian border), they're more of a melting pot of various civilizations including Indian, Middle Eastern and North African influences (with an accent on the Indian part). Not forgetting the whole added Fantasy factor. :)

QuestionMark said:
So, I suppose part of the thread is purely fanboy stuff.

Haha, I bet that's the part I agree on! 8)

QuestionMark said:
I still hold by the fact that Miura seemed to be making some commentary on the characters when he had them be given a specific element/magical object to work with. He tends to work on a level that is deeper than just the surface. And I thought, as an example, that the Farnese/silver for protection versus real, honest to goodness offense was both fitting and interesting. A commentary on how much she had changed since the Holy Knights. That still doesn't seem such a stretch to me, but maybe we'll just end up disagreeing on that.

Well actually I wouldn't especially disagree about that one, I even thought of it as rather obvious (then again I tend to think of a lot of stuff that way -__-), considering the fact that Farnese herself says about it, plus the "famous" properties of silver in various myths/tales. Same goes for the wind and fire elements going to Serpico and Isidro, I think your comparison isn't so good here precisely because Miura made it so that the reader would naturally think about it. I know I didn't need the characters to ponder upon all this to get my own idea on the matter. Not sure I'm clear.

QuestionMark said:
I guess I'm most curious what you guys thought was a stretch-- both Walter and Aazealh,you've suggested that, and I'd be curious to see what they were.

Hey, I said I found it pertinent overall! :p Ah well, checking quickly, that would be the part about the arm and the eye (this one would maybe fit as a misconception because of what Guts himself says about it), and mostly the soul stuff. I'd probably find some others too, so I'll try to comment with more details later. Don't hesitate to search for older threads on the subject by the way.

QuestionMark said:
As for teh whole Griffith-- soul or no soul discussion-- "soul" may have been the wrong word.

Yes, it's a matter of semantics, and I'm a picky person. Still, I think the nuance is quite important.

QuestionMark said:
What you are describing I would generally describe as a person (metaphorically) losing their soul.

Yeah, but it's a matter of how you define "soul", and this precise case it doesn't apply. Here's for info the 3 most relevant definitions of a soul according to the dictionary:

1. The animating and vital principle in humans, credited with the faculties of thought, action, and emotion and often conceived as an immaterial entity.

2. The spiritual nature of humans, regarded as immortal, separable from the body at death, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state.

3. The disembodied spirit of a dead human.

So as you can see, it perfectly represents the "ego" of Griffith, that we see being transformed into the spiritual and immaterial entity Femto.

QuestionMark said:
I guess since in the Berserk world there is a whole Void into which the dead souls enter

Well, it's not exactly a void actually, here's a picture:

Vortex.jpg

QuestionMark said:
The arguement was mostly that yes, "power corrupts" and that in the Berserk world you don't simply become a mean guy that rules people with an iron fist-- instead can be made physically manifest (sometimes)

Yeah, and even if the definition of humanity can be debated, I don't think a lot of people would disagree about Griffith having lost what little humanity he ever had.

QuestionMark said:
Basically, my point was that Miura tends to make physical... things that are typically not-- thus Griffith goes through a transformation, that occurs before our eyes

Well, Berserk is a graphic novel, after all. ;D

QuestionMark said:
Also, sorry these posts have been so long

Length isn't a problem, but it's true that it can discourage people to even attempt to respond.
 
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