(Continue from page 310, after "For the First time they had done something out of love")
Grenouille does not feel dead oddly enough. One would figure after being torn to shreds and devoured by cannibals that your life would be over and you would be no more. However why does Grenouille's feel alive as if life had just begun? He sits there, feeling no physical presence to call his own and yet he feels vibrant and exhilarated. Like the many scents memorized throughout his life, thousands upon thousands of options as to why life is still felt by Grenouille flow through his mind. He knows that this is not physically possible, so he must think of it in another arena, not just physically.
After many days of transparent being and thought, Grenouille has come to a major conclusion. His quest for the perfect scent must not be finished and he must go on. There must be some scent, some odor that has eluded him and thus barred him from making the perfect scent and ending his journey. Now in his new form he must continue his work that he had once thought finished. Only this time Jean Baptiste had more than olfactory powers, he has found that like most lost spirits and souls, he has to some degree the ability to control and overcome a living beings body. Grenouille found this out by merely walking into somebody on the street while walking, and finding himself going the other way walking awkwardly. He took a moment and stopped himself to see what had just happened to him. After this revelation, he knew he had new and possibly powerful abilities. Grenouille realized this is more than just a power, but a close ally that will help him on his quest to find that scent with out much problem, like before.
So for many months Jeean Baptisite toiled around town until the over heard a conversation in a local eatery that caught his fancy. It was Pierre Paul and his colleague at the traveling circus that was in town. They were discussing a young female they had seen on their journey here and were just remarking on her strange beauty and elegance. This peaked his interest because with such beauty, must come a scent. Grenouille followed Pierre home and took over his body. Having used Pierre Paul to find out which towns they have recently visited, Grenouille was off.
Over the next few we...
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... went to work. Only this time, in his new body, he didn't need to be as stealth. He quickly acquired her scent in the usual fashion and left the body, deprived of any scent or even that white hair, and left Montece.
The tale of the murder spread quickly throughout the region and there was a new interest in finding Grenouille the killer. However, that name nor its presence was ever felt again by the people of France. Although that is not entirely true...
There is a tale about a mountain in France that seems to make people happier. It is a mountain called Mount de Bobricke, which is south of Paris. Grenouille now resides in his old mountain home for eternity but as he has found his perfect scent he shares it with those that pass by his mountain. He continually makes it and sends it out into the surrounding air for people to enjoy. Over time, this mountain has become a vigil to some, almost a fountain of youth if you will. To this day, people visit Mount de Bobricke for the scents and beautiful atmosphere that his scents make around the surrounding area. They feel a presence and happiness while sitting around the mountain.
Albert Camus is a skillful writer noted for showing aspects of culture and society through the depiction of his characters. In The Stranger, Camus illustrates the existentialism culture and how that comes into play in the life of the protagonist Meursault. The Stranger, as suggested by the title, is a novel revolving around the protagonist, Meursault, who is a stranger to the French-Algerian society as he challenges its values. Camus vividly portrays Meursault’s journey through the use of imagery, irony, and symbolism. In The Stranger, Albert Camus uses the minor character, Raymond Sintes, to illustrate the contrasting nature of Meursault and how his friendship with Raymond leads to his downfall.
One of the prevalent themes John Gardner mentions in the story of Grendel is that perceptions of reality between people are different. Gardner reveals to readers throughout the novel that words, events, experiences, and beliefs forge character’s realities. In Grendel perception of reality greatly affects people’s actions, their viewpoints towards life, and decisions. For example, Grendel’s perception of reality is that the world is solely mechanical and is created with his words.
demonstrates how the characters of the book are reckless and view love as something that can
Grendel is an intelligent monster who is capable of being just as human as anyone else in John Gardner’s novel. Aside from Grendel’s hideous appearance and his emotional outbursts, there was very little that separated him from the rest of the world. Just like the Danes, Grendel was moved by the words that were being spoken out of the Shaper’s mouth. He was moved by the
Classic literature juxtaposes two ways of life that illustrate the poles of true happiness: a life of adventure, exemplified by Odysseus (The Odyssey), and the life at home, which poets and farmers represent. In The Iliad, Achilleus chooses to live a short, glorious life, even though he could have chosen to live a long life in anonymity. Arguments have been put forth that the life of adventure is a living hell, as Achilleus testifies from Hades after his death - in hindsight, he would have settled for the life of a slave and given up his glory, if only he could have lived longer. Alternately, the life of the (metaphorical) farmer has been despised as simple and ordinary, when true immortality is only attained with great accomplishments, such as sacking Troy or surviving heroic adventures which are then recorded. In a modern day autobiography of the 1996 ascent of Mt. Everest (Sagarmatha to the Nepalis, or “goddess of the sky”), Jon Krakauer reveals the human motivation behind adventure and tells the story of the men and women who lived and died on the expeditions to the summit during that spring (Into Thin Air). With epic literature and a recent epic, I will illuminate the values of a reflective life as well as the life of adventure, and delve into the necessary components of the ‘good life.’
Grendel feels like an outcast in the society he lives in causing him to have a hard time finding himself in the chaotic world. He struggles because the lack of communication between he and his mother. The lack of communication puts Grendel in a state of depression. However, Grendel comes in contact with several characters with different philosophical beliefs, which allows his to see his significance in life. Their views on life influence Grendel to see the world in a meaningful way.
In the beginning Grendel’s perspective of himself leads to various encounters that help him discover the meaninglessness to his very own existence. From the beginning through many centuries of pondering Grendel has come to the idea that the world consists entirely of Grendel and not-Grendel. Thus Grendel begins his search for meaning of his very own life with an existential philosophy, the belief that emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will. While Grendel’s overall perspective of nature is that of mindless and mechanical machine, he believes that he is a separate entity from this machine. Furthermore he holds the philosophy that he himself is a god like creature that “blink by blink” creates the world. This philosophy undermined when Grendel notices that events occur before he can think them into existence. Grendel witnesses the death of a deer by the hands of humans: “Suddenly time is a rush for the hart: head flicks, he jerks, his front legs buckling, and he’s dead. He lies as still as the snow hurtling outward around him to the hushed world’s rim. The image clings to my mind like a
In Grendel, nearly all of the characters are driven to shape the world to their ideas. Hrothgar spends his life crafting a government. Grendel's mother is described as loving her son "not for myself, my holy specialness, but for my son-ness, my displacement of air as visible proof of her power (138)." Both Grendel and the Shaper constantly seek the ability to reshape reality with words. While they have differing motives, all of these acts of creation give power and significance to the creator. As Baby Grendel desperately convinces himself, it is the act of observing and commenting on what is outside that makes one real: "I understood that, finally ...
The monster Grendel is the ironic eye through which the action is viewed and from this perspective he provides the reader with never-ending examples of buffoonery and self-parody. Often his claims reveal the Sartrean component in his makeup: "I create the whole universe, blink by blink"(Gardner 22). Gardner,of course,wants to make a point here about solipsism. There is more to the objective world than Grendel's ego. Naturally the universe still exists when Grendel closes his eyes. Likewise, when Grendel says "I observe myself observing what I observe", (Gardner 29) ,he reminds us of Sartre's view of the self-reflective nature of consciousness. As he said in his interview, Gardner planned to parody Sartre's ideas in Being and Nothingess in these sections of the novel.
Not long after Dianne Lavigne’s murder on June 26th 1997, the perpetrators began to receive the penalties of their actions. Stephane Gagne, who was a shooter in both murders, was arrested on December 5th 1997. He pleaded guilty to Dianne’s murder and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He cut a deal with the prosecution where he received 140$ a month for privileges in prison and 400$ a month for his son. In exchange, he agreed to be the main witness for the first-degree murder trail against “Mom” Boucher for both murders in 2002 . Tousignant, who was the second shooter in the murder, was told by Boucher to lay low. Instead, he got involved in a drunken argument at a saloon that raised concerns of him being a loose cannon. Boucher took precautions to ensure that he would not be another snitch used in his trial and on December 6th of 1997 called “Touts” in. He was later found February 7th 1998 near Bromont fingerless and scorched with several bullet wounds . Boucher was first tried in 1998 for masterminding the assassinations a...
The relationship shared by Pierre and Helene is best described as a lustful charade. It is no coincidence that Pierre, one of the most introspective characters in the novel, first marries a shallow, inwardly-ugly adulterer. His first recorded attitude towards Helene is one of admira...
When watching the people to gauge their reactions towards the death of the Shaper, Grendel states “The woman is as still as the dead man in his bed. I am tempted to snatch her...But I back away. I look in on the Shaper one more time. The old women are arranging him…(Gardner, 145)” This shows how the Shaper has made Grendel respect him enough to not kill anyone on the day of his death, especially someone he was important to. This is one of the few moments where it is clear that Grendel has learned a substantial amount of things from the Shaper, and respects him enough to let him have a day of peace after his passing. When thinking about the Shaper’s death, Grendel is wrought with emptiness once more, exclaiming “...now the Shaper is dead, strange thoughts come over me. I think of the pastness of the past: how the moment I am alive in, prisoned in, moves like a tumbling form through darkness, the underground river. Not only ancient history - the mythical age of the brothers’ feud - but my own history one second ago, has vanished utterly, dropped out of existence (Gardner, 146).” The Shaper, in this context, is shown to be the creator of Grendel’s positivity, and now that he is gone Grendel is falling back to the place he was before the Shaper existed: a true monster. Grendel is now seeing the world through solely
...life. In not seeking the connection between heart, mind, and soul, Grendel lives a disjointed life, fulfilling the prophecy of the dragon; all is meaningless, because it is meaningless to and through him. "Nihil ex nihilo, I always say."
This particular event, in the very beginning of the novel, demonstrates how two people of t...
The story begins with the Marquise de Merteuil corresponding with Vicomte de Valmont regarding a luscious new act of ‘revenge’, as she describes it, against the Comte de Gercourt. The young Cecile de Volanges has just come home from the convent and her marriage to Gercourt has been arranged. However, before he can wed the innocent child, Merteuil proposes Valmont ‘educate’ her, thus spoiling Gercourt’s fancy for untarnished convent girls. Valmont is uninterested in such an easy seduction and is far more aroused by the thought of lulling The Presidente’ de Tourvel, the very epitome of virtue, into submission. And so the tale unfolds.