I've been wondering about what makes this book feel more feminine (?) than others. It's not just the fleshed out relationships, as most authors can establish those connections. I think it has something to do with the way Tepper handles discord in those relationships. Speaker for the Dead had it's own disfunctionalities, but Tepper was willing to venture deeper into the minds of those in conflict. It would be nice to go over this in class some.
I also noticed that I had an easier time reading this book as a fantasy work than science fiction. All of the other books we've read this semester left me thinking about what would happen if Man met some variation of an intelligent being from another planet. Each, in a way, presented a case for mankind's reaction. The science fiction novels we've read and movies we've seen have all been thought-experiments. The aliens on Grass resemble the mythical beasts of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings more than, well, "aliens." Those other works have been concerned with mankind's relationship with aliens (or their leftovers) as told through the perspective of main characters. I would say that Grass is mostly concerned with Marjorie. She isn't just the main point of view, but the story itself. We do get a few indirect mumbles from Father Sandoval of how the Church will react to the lifeforms on Grass, but humanity's response to another living intelligent species does not enter into the story.
This book is filed under "almost familiar aliens" in the syllabus, but for me, the aliens are different enough that I found it easier to resolve them as fantasy elements. The enthrallment of the riders resembled the effects of the One Ring. The foxen brought to mind those giant sentient eagles. The "evil" Hippae, in my mind, were corrupted, rather than mutated. And finally, the "science" in Grass came too late to convince me. Whereas Card worked science into Speaker for the Dead from the very beginning, I couldn't help but think that if Sanctity really wanted to find a cure, they would have sent down scientists disguised as ambassadors. After all, it took one woman just a few days to get the solution, one woman who would have probably arrived at that relatively simple conclusion had she been told what Sanctity knew all along.
If science fiction works are thought experiments, then Grass is one with too many unique parameters to be useful as such. I think. Maybe? Does that make Dune fantasy? Feel free to poke holes in my logic. I'd like to know what you think. This argument is all very new, and I would be surprised if I didn't change my mind a few times during the class discussion.
All this aside, I really did like Grass. I think it would make a great miniseries.
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I would agree with you, something about Grass was "feminine." Perhaps it was that the story revolved around Marjorie, that it dealt with human relationships with extreme sensitivity or that it took two women to cure the plague.
ReplyDeleteI too found Grass at the precipice of being a fantasy story, or the boundaries of sci-fi - you're right, it felt more like a fantasy tale and I am content to see the creatures more as monsters and less as aliens.
While it did take one woman a few days to figure out the cure, it took lots of listening and a relationship of trust with the foxen "First"- not an easy task. Another pont Tepper makes is that there is a role for every aspect of our nature - it was through patience and violence that humanity saved itself.
"The aliens on Grass resemble the mythical beasts of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings more than, well, "aliens."
ReplyDeleteI had a very similar thought while I was reading Grass. Perhaps this might be owing to the portrayal of aliens in the other works we've read as always being violent (the buggers), or of having the potential to be violent (the pequeninos).
In Grass, while both hippae and foxen are initially presented as violent, we later learn of the hippae's cunning...which creates space for the foxen to become the victim. And so there is something more than just an alien vs. predator encounter in this novel. That Tepper probes so deeply, the minds of her characters, shows a different kind of concern that I don't feel we have seen in other works...although as of now I am unable to describe this difference.
On another note, I found the various allusions, imagery, and metaphor of Grass to hint that this is a novel about America. Tepper's world of Grass is a prairie land, not unlike the American Frontier. The escape from religious persecution and the definition of a new nation and a new world all hearken back to the founding and definition and re-definition of America. How strangely fitting, then, that we should read Grass immediately after Manifest Destiny.
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ReplyDeleteSomething seems feminine? Maybe the fact that all of the individuals who solves problems are females. Marjarie, the savior, The Dr., the scientist who finds the solution, and even the Bon Mother who defies her husband and the Hippae.
ReplyDeleteI would argue the reason these aliens seem different is that they don't fit the mold of "humans but not." They are more animalistic, though still intelligent. They are similar to Piggies, they just don't talk.
I'd also love to hear why you feel the Hippae were corrupted, not mutated. Who corrupted, or what?
I would say that the Bons remind me more of the individuals who go out onto oil rigs by themselves(to avoid taxation usually). They create their own laws and regulations, just like Grass did. Plus, they're a little crazy
ReplyDeletePhil,
ReplyDeleteI feel that when Sherri Tepper says "mutation," she's indexing the kind of corruption that turned elves into orcs (I think that's how it went). The leap from reproducing before being fully metamorphosed to being evil was just way too quick for me. You could just as easily say that the Orcs mutated away from elves, but the imagery of the "fallen" is too obvious to ignore.
Tim,
ReplyDeleteThe orcs are supposed to have religious/moral ties to them. I don't think we should tag this idea to the Hippae. The Orcs are Lucifer and the other Angels that challenged God. The Hippae seem to have developed into creatures with differently developed minds. I'd say it's more like the Queens of the Buggers, only it was the open minded Queen that killed her children till she had one with a similar mind as her's.