N
Neiru2012
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Aazealh said:Well it's easy to say it's just partial or whatnot, but either the part I originally quoted was from you or it wasn't. I didn't read the whole thing, I just took this part at random.
I think this answers itself.
Aazealh said:Honestly your reasoning that Griffith wished to give her what she wanted is preposterous to me. He did that for himself.
*wonders what part of "mostly to reestablish his self-image of being needed and desirable with someone he hoped might still be attracted to him that way" you took to not mean he did it for himself*
Yep, he did it for himself, and that's how he gets people to do what he wants: by giving them what he thinks they want.
Aazealh said:Griffith acted rashly after his defeat in order to regain some confidence, and it worked well enough from what we see of him in the morning.
You mean the whole crying in a fetal position part? Yea, that worked out great.
Aazealh said:His dream was always his top priority. Always. When his heart did betray him, it was because he couldn't be as emotionless as he wanted to, or doubted himself, but his dream remained his ultimate goal all along.
Yep, that's what I said. Well, I guess I specified that he wanted his dream to remain his ultimate goal all along, and constantly fought back anything inside him that didn't agree.
Aazealh said:And I don't think Griffith identified himself with the dream itself. Nothing of the sort is hinted at in the story. It's just his unique goal in life, one that obsesses him. I think that's enough as it is. I don't quite make sense of your idea that he didn't want to be a person.
By "person" I mean he doesn't want to have weaknesses, vulnerabilities, distractions, or be sway-able in any way. His ideal for himself is to be completely dedicated to his dream.
Aazealh said:I don't know what to tell you; it just doesn't make sense to me, and I don't think it has any solid ground. But if you don't like that interpretation anyway, why stick to it?
Emotions don't always make sense, that's why they make us do irrational things. I "stick to" that interpretation because I don't let what I "like" blind me to what's actually happening. Also, because I realize that no matter how much Griffith's ideal version of himself doesn't have weaknesses, his human self does, and they are plainly evident in that scene. If this doesn't make sense to you, that's fine by me. As I said before, there's room for many interpretations and the story will mean different things to different people. That is the power of myth, and I believe Berserk's story is timeless enough to be called a myth.
Aazealh said:I'm not sure what you mean by "reconcile", but you're taking things out of context. The whole tale Griffith spinned about Guts comes from the time he defeated him in volume 8. ... He was obsessed by Guts then for the simple reason that his dream was, for all intents and purposes, over. And he felt it was Guts' fault. He says so himself, and not that Guts is "more important" than his dream. Like Casca would later explain at the waterfall, Griffith was just a man, and he had to rely on others to achieve such a grand dream. He couldn't succeed all by himself. And Guts being as exceptional as he is, Griffith relied on him (to Casca's chagrin, as she wanted to fill that role).
Umm... riiight, because when he's thinking "but why is it when it comes to him, I always lose my composure?" with a picture of the Zodd battle for a backdrop, he totally means the Vol 8 incident. I would highly suggest re-reading Vol 10 "Infiltrating Windham (1)" before you say that. Then again, if you can read the waterfall scene and not grasp that Casca wanted to be more than just a military asset to Griffith, and that Guts stole both her role as closest confidant and sword, I don't know what to tell you. And that's what it comes down to, I guess. If you think I'm taking every internal monologue Griffith ever had out of context, we don't have much to discuss.
It’s not my style to force people to see things my way. The fact is, you view Berserk through an entirely different bias than I do. For me to try to argue with it, I’d have to go over each chapter one by one which, as you say about my essay, would be a waste of my time. Because, honestly, I don’t care if you have a different perspective on things than I do. I don’t want you to have the same perspective as I do. If everybody came away from Berserk feeling the same and thinking the same, it wouldn’t be a very good/interesting story. I hope whoever reads this thread later finds value in both our arguments and forms their own interpretation.
(And, again, thanks to this thread I have found things to tweak in my essay, particularly translations, and I greatly appreciate that.)