Heavy Stuff (Human Nature and Religion)

Our book for this week, Grass, is another interesting examination of the implications of humans encountering another sentient being. Sheri S. Tepper's novel presents a story that demonstrates weaknesses in human nature as well as its strengths and the possibilities these characteristics allow. I found the main character, Marjorie, to be particularly interesting when it comes to examining human-alien relations and what the nature of these relations imply about the characteristics of human actions and motives. Marjorie, from the beginning, is able to perceive the true nature of the Hippae and is cautious and wary as a result of this. For others, namely the bons, the Hippae are not seen for what they truly are because of the overwhelming power that the Hippae have to control them. This warns against the human tendency to go along with the majority and, it could be argued, to allow one's self to become brainwashed for the sake of tradition and honor or pride. Now, one can't really blame the bons for losing control in such a way, obviously the Hippae had certain powers that gave them control, but the fact that some individuals, such as Sylvan, were able to avoid being completely brainwashed shows that there was some hope if one could only use some mental strength, such as Marjorie demonstrates throughout the book.

Another theme within Grass that is highly prevalent is religion. We see clearly the clash between Sanctity and the Old Catholic religions as well as any other non-Sanctity belief or non-belief systems. The spread of Sanctity to most of humanity is troubling in that their "doctrine" is repeated obsessively, even by those who clearly don't believe a word of it. They basically force adolescent boys into becoming "Sanctified" and serving Sanctity in its seemingly meaningless work. The main purpose of the group is to preserve the genetic material of Sanctified who die so that they may be cloned in the future. I found the whole system to be very creepy and cult-like. How this system relates to our own world, I can't say. I'd like to think that humanity could not be sucked into this all-encompassing system that takes away individuality and personal freedoms, but I found another blog that questions this: "...you couldn’t really have a fundamentalist church taking over the world, now could you? Rereading Grass a couple of years ago, I was struck by how much closer it suddenly seemed. A President in the White House who had been elected by fundamentalists, who believed in the end times, and who had banned funding for charities in Africa promoting contraception….suddenly the world she portrayed no longer seemed so very far away." Obviously, this threat is not completely plausible, because the beliefs of said leader certainly did not represent the bulk of the U.S. population, let alone that of humanity. Still, it's a frightening prospect.