2/13/20-2/14/20 Colin Rualo PD 7 Late

02/13/2020 Colin Rualo PD 7

Aim: How does Grendel’s conversation with the Dragon illuminate the philosophical theory of nihilism and simultaneously define Grendel’s purpose?

We first had a vocabulary quiz on Unit 7.

Pair Share: 

1. Why does the dragon use a ridiculous term to explain everything?
2. How does Gardner describe the voice of the Dragon? Why?
3. What physical item(s) is/are the only thing(s) the Dragon seems to care about?
4. What element(s) of time can the Dragon “see”?
5. How does the Dragon describe the role of the Shaper?

After briefly discussing with our groups, Ms. Fusaro informed us that these questions were more like guidelines to lead the group discussion. Not every response correlated to a specific question peers built off one another in order to fully comprehend Grendel Chapter 5 together.

What the class deduced about the Dragon:

• The Dragon, who has the voice of an old man, deems all decisions and all things meaningless. For Grendel to try to comprehend everything, to question his role with the Danes, is meaningless. What humans do, trying to make sense of everything, is meaningless too.
• The Dragon can see the past, present, and future. When he tells people of their future, they blame the Dragon for it. But he cannot change the future. We can compare this to Greek Mythology, in the fate vs. free will motif, as well as in Oedipus, in which nobody can truly change their fate.

Though the questions pertain to the Dragon, our class shared some realizations about Grendel and how he compares to the Dragon as well:

• The Dragon’s knowledge of the world is bigger to Grendel, so he can’t comprehend it. To Grendel they’re just ridiculous terms.
• Grendel came to the Dragon for advice, open-minded. But when he meets the Dragon, the Dragon blabbers to him. Grendel may be wiser than the Dragon in this scenario because the Dragon is close-minded, stuck on his nihilistic view of the world and stubborn to change because of his immortality.
• The Dragon vs Grendel reflects the two schools of thought how one lives (never asking questions vs always questioning life), which are described in Ms. Fusaro’s Google Classroom post.
• The Dragon: “I’m here, I’m vibing”; he isn’t bothered by life’s questions. On the other hand, Grendel: “Why? Why?” The Dragon tells him “BE STILL,” to just accept it. He tells Grendel he is wasting brain cells thinking about life.
• Both Grendel and the Dragon are “black-pilled” according to Steven: the Dragon has nihilistic views similar to Grendel in the previous chapters; there is a possibility that the world means nothing and Grendel is trying to lie to himself and question it. However, the Dragon accepts it.

Ms. Fusaro elaborated on the point that Grendel questions the world while the Dragon doesn’t. It exemplifies the two views of nihilism, where everything is pointless. The first view: “everything is pointless so why do I bother.” The second view: “everything is pointless so I might as well do what I want.” 

Group Discussion:

Reviewing Chapter 4 to understand Chapter 5: religion? (page 55-56)

Our class tried to relate the characters of Grendel to religion:

• The Shaper helps people understand stuff. The Shaper gives explanations to the world, similar to religion. People look up to the Shaper so they believe what he says.
• Gardner portrays religion as something that perpetuates ignorance. Shaper is used to create false illusion of sense, to create a false understanding of how the world works. Grendel sees that for the first time as he becomes a teen. Maybe Grendel won’t find the answer to all his answers. He’s coming to terms with accepting that but hasn’t yet.
• Shaper is just a human, a storyteller; he transforms ordinary narrative into an art form.
• Grendel gets frustrated because he's denied to be part of the bigger community.
• Grendel wants to be part of something bigger. He says,  “Why do I let these people say things about me?” The Dragon says “You don’t get it. You are a part of mankind because you drive them to be better and drive them to do what you do.” Where does Grendel fit in the puzzle? He wants to feel he’s part of something bigger.
• Even though Grendel is trying to find his answer, he’s getting more and more confused. He’s influenced by the Shaper and the Dragon. The Dragon’s word is going against religion; you should want to be successful, everything has meaning (religion) vs nothing has meaning and everything will end (Dragon)
• Self fulfilling prophecy: rules were created by religion (religion says Grendel is the monster). He feels like he has to be that role. The Dragon agrees that that is his role to help humans be better. 

Reflection:

What did I learn?

I learned that one’s philosophy dictates their actions. The Dragon’s nihilistic philosophy of “everything is pointless so why bother” is portrayed when he says the Shaper’s efforts to impose meaning on the world is ridiculous. Grendel, however, struggles to have his own philosophy or morals, stuck in an existential tug-of-war between the Dragon and the Shaper. 

Why did I learn it?

I learned this through our discussion on character philosophy. Though English classes often discuss character motives (Why is Gatsby trying to impress Daisy? Why does Holden want to be the catcher in the rye? Why does Beowulf come to Herot?), we rarely dive into their personal philosophy. By exploring nihilism and people’s actions because of it, I have a better understanding of why people do things, when they do it.

How will I use what I learned?

Understanding another person’s philosophy provides insight on their character traits. I can use what I’ve learned to attempt to understand why a person would do such-and-such action. I can also use this new knowledge of nihilism to help resolve my own (hypothetical) existential crisis, and decide if I want to be an “everything is pointless so why do I bother” kind of guy or an “everything is pointless so I might as well do what I want” kind of guy, or not be a nihilist at all.  

02/14/2020 Colin Rualo PD 7

Aim: How does Grendel’s conversation with the Dragon illuminate the philosophical theory of nihilism and simultaneously define Grendel’s purpose?

Chapter 5 Discuss Now:

What does Grendel learn about humans and God while visiting the Dragon?

Responses:

• Grendel learns that humans feed themselves lies. They try to find some meaning from life, even though it's meaningless. When they figure it out themselves, the shaper comes and feeds them lies again. It’s an endless cycle.
• Grendel learns that there’s not too much of a difference between him and humans. Humans are scared of him but he doesn’t understand why. Grendel feels like he’s in a situation where he can't do anything since humans are scared of him. The dragon tells him he shouldn’t do anything because everything is meaningless.
• In terms of humans, his purpose as the monster is the thing that drives humans to be better (better science, technology, religion). If he wasn’t there he would be replaced with someone else. Dragon may represent the Devil- boastful, prideful (a deadly sin)
• God & Satan are two sides of the same coin. They were around at the same time. The fact that the dragon is aware of the meaninglessness and just plays with his gold, while Grendel is killing himself over trying to find the answer that isn’t there, shows that the Dragon itself is on another level, beyond this fear of thought. 
• Related to the story of Job: Job didn’t understand god’s creation. It’s a human vs divine power. Grendel doesn’t comprehend the world because he's on a lower level than God. However, the Dragon accepts it, because he knows he’ll eventually die. Similar to the Bible, it's like a battle between good and evil yet good will prevail.

Notes:

• Symbol: The lion - king of animals
• Philosophy: Nihilism - the belief in nothingness
• Structure: Grendel goes to the underworld for advice and knowledge, much as Odysseus goes to the underworld to seek information from Tiresias. He emerges armed with despair. The Dragon has omniscience, but offers Grendel no redeeming vision of the world. His only advice? Seek out gold and sit on it. This approach suggests that material goods are the only thing that gives meaning to life.
• The black sun - Grendel sees deeply into the dragon’s eye and sees nothing, a void.
• The dragon is golden and fiery as a lion.  (Zodiac sign Leo is alluded to here)
• The dragon suggests that the quest for meaning ends in nothingness because nothing will remain except a silent universe. This anticipates the discovery of matter speeding up after the “bang” and the universe stretching out into nothingness. 
• He understands time and space, and the connectedness of all.

Mr. David Luu pointed out the last bullet to us, saying how it is very related to the Book of Job. Job doesn’t understand but God says “Don’t question it.” He proposed a scenario for us to think about: 

Suppose it’s the first day of school and Ms. Fusaro walks in and says, “Hi guys, you guys are gonna fail the class anyway so why bother?” 

One response was that the person wouldn’t be afraid to make mistakes or fail.

Mr. Luu also pointed out  that the Hebrew pronunciation of Satan (say - ten) was Satan (sah - tahn), meaning the questioner. There is a direct parallel between Satan and Dragon, because the Dragon makes Grendel question. We are also able to draw a parallel between Satan and the Dragon itself: the Dragon is a serpent, which is a snake, and a snake in Christianity represents temptation. 

SPACE & TIME… AS TOLD BY A DRAGON

“The apparent absence of change within a second of time tells nothing as to the change within a thousand years”(66).

Whole Group Discussion:

Think about the proposition of time relative to the Dragon’s point. What are your thoughts?

We also discussed the concept of Infinity, and how infinity means no end to no beginning. 

However, “some infinities are bigger than other infinities,” in a mathematical sense. 82∞ > 7 ∞, because 82 is closer to ∞ (if you say ∞ is a very large number). We relate to real life because lifespan is relative. A human living 82 years has obviously lived longer than a mosquito that lives 7 days. So, if you consider life to be nothing and mean nothing, then the person who has lived 82 years has more “nothingness” than the mosquito.

However, Ms. Fusaro brought a counterpoint to get us out of our infinity debate:

Even if our 85 years is greater than a rat’s, but a rat has the same metacognition [understanding of one’s thought process], is it greater than a tortoise, who can live a thousand years? In mathematical sense, it's a tiny difference, but in a philosophical sense there is no difference.

From this discussion about infinity, we came to realize that the Dragon’s omniscience may be his weakness:

• The finitude of life is what gives it meaning. 
• Since the Dragon is immortal maybe, if we lived as long as it, we would turn to his point of view. Since Grendel only gets to live a small fraction of time, they can’t really understand each other.
• The Dragon can’t relate because time has no meaning to him. For Grendel, time is limited; he doesn’t know what to do with the time he has, and there’s so many things he wants to know. 
• We (and Grendel) don’t know what’s in our future, but the Dragon already does, so there’s no point in him having goals or expectations.

Group Discussion: Does the quote above make us feel any kind of way?

“I made my mind a blank and fell, sank away like a stone through earth and sea, toward the dragon”(56). 

Responses:

• The earth and sea are such huge concepts, and distance-wise a stone is minuscule compared to earth and sea. Grendel cant truly understand where the dragon is coming from.
• It makes you uneasy; the fact that he compares himself to a stone and “sank away” makes you imagine Grendel dropping into the dragon’s lair or going to hell
• Lucifer dropped from heaven. When Lucifer fell from heaven he was out of God's grace; he didn't do bad.
• The book is an allegory to counter culture because of its questioning of religion. This idea suggests that God isn’t the definitive answer, and by rationalizing Grendel’s actions, and by tying that in w Satan’s [Dragon’s] coercion, it references to that new religious conservative American culture.

We then discussed the symbolism behind the Dragon’s gold. It was the one possession he cared about. It would be his legacy and would be immortalized. But why gold? Why something so materialistic? It’s because the Dragon rejects the shaper’s ideals and things humans do to try to make their lives meaningful. He sits on what people have “wasted” their lives on. The people who were killed by the dragon were attracted by greed; but dying valiantly to a Dragon is more honorable than dying on a throne, only known for your wealth. The Dragon gives himself purpose by giving others purpose.

“Ridiculous hairy creature torn apart by poetry”

DO NOW: 

After conversing with the Dragon, what are we to understand about Grendel’s statement?

The “poetry” refers to the Shaper’s advice versus the Dragon’s advice. Grendel asks, what if this Dragon is right? What if the Shaper is wrong? He is having an existential crisis, and he is just an adolescent. Grendel is confused and questioning everything. 

What makes life so scary is that we live to find that purpose ourselves.

• Steven responded: The way you conduct your life is your own doing. From happy to sad, to wealth to poverty, it depends on you and your actions. Life is a vicious cycle: physical health affects mental health and vice versa. The purpose of life is to break out of that cycle. According to this system, we are slaves to ourselves. We are like robots. But we must find autonomy, find control of our own lives. Question our own beliefs.

Mr. Luu asked what was the difference between himself and Lebron James. The answer: Nothing. We’re all going to die anyway. We are a single being, no different from each other.

Student Reflection:

What did I learn?

I learned that life is what you make of it. Life is what humans - as a whole - make of it. The Dragon’s lasting words to Grendel are “Seek out gold and sit on it.” Though he believes all human actions are pointless, he tells Grendel to find his purpose. To make life not pointless. The Dragon has his gold; he waits for valiant warriors to come and attempt to fulfill a great quest. His purpose is giving others purpose. Also, I learned that religious and historical context plays a big role in Grendel. The Dragon physically represents a serpent, which in Christianity represents temptation. The Dragon’s questioning nature is consistent with the name Satan, which translates to “the questioner.” Its questioning nature may also symbolize counter culture, a time in American history in which social norms were being challenged. Though the Dragon’s nihilist view is simple on a base level, there is much more to what he says and what he is when you look closer. 

Why did I learn it?

I realized Grendel was having an existential crisis when he said he was “torn apart by poetry.” He doesn’t know if the world is truth or lies; he doesn’t know whether he’s a monster or not. He struggles to find his identity. This inner confusion is something adolescents know all too well: What do I want to be? What can I be? What do others already see me as? Who am I? Furthermore, our answers to these great questions are definitely not ones we answer unaccompanied. Like the Dragon, like the Shaper, people influence us by putting upon us their experiences and their opinions regarding the choices they’ve made. I see how troubled Grendel is, and how he doesn’t know much and has little time to understand any of it, and it’s relatable. 

How will I use what I learned?

The lesson we learned may not immediately help answer life’s questions. But by understanding the Dragon’s advice, I know that to find a purpose is what makes life meaningful. The Dragon is immortal. But instead of being eternally bored, he found his purpose. I, however, am not immortal. So I must find my purpose too, and ultimately give meaning to my (relatively) brief life.