Here it is, the final final I wrote this semester. Marvel at my powers of bullshit.
An examination of the ‘Other’
The ‘Other’, a nebulous construct representing a deviation from recognized cultural conventions that inspire fear and rejection in the majority population. The concept of the ‘Other’, the struggle of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ is an ages old one, found in sources from modern propaganda all the way back to our earliest literature. At its core what is Homer’s Iliad but the tale of the Greek ‘us’ versus the Trojan ‘them’? What helps to differentiate great literature from pieces lost in the annals of time is how an author approaches this well-worn path through literary narrative. By developing the ‘Other’ in unique or unusual ways a narrative gives the reader a more interesting and thought provoking story to follow. By examining Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest this essay will examine the role of the ‘Other’ over a timeline of literature and compare the various ‘Others’ and their literary treatment.
Beowulf as one of the earliest surviving fictional narratives has one of the more basic approaches to the ‘Other’ in literature. The ‘Other’ takes the form of both Grendel and his mother; nebulous and horrific beasts that seek only to feast upon and destroy the works of men. The story begins with the Danish King already besieged by the monstrous Grendel when Beowulf appears to solve Hrothgar’s problems with his astounding strength and battle prowess, but the inclusion of Beowulf also introduces the first alternate take on the treatment of the ‘Other’ that we see in literature. Beowulf, by dint of coming from a foreign country with abilities greater than that of ordinary men, is himself an ‘Other’ and could easily be seen as a threat to Hrothgar’s power upon the throne. However due to the inclusion of far more monstrous and overtly hostile ‘Others’ Beowulf gets a by due to his generally human appearance and much needed offer of aid. Ultimately then Beowulf is a narrative about the struggle between two opposing factions of ‘Others’ battling for power over the territory of the native residents. Beowulf’s relinquishing of his right-by-combat to take over the Danes country, though never overtly addressed, is the action that cements Beowulf as the heroic ‘Other’ as opposed to the villainous ‘Other’.
By contrast the ‘Other’ of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is built up in the mind of the titular protagonist as a horrendous foe while simultaneously actually being quite conciliatory. As opposed to Beowulf this narrative, despite the presence of strange fae entities that interact with and tempt Gawain, does not actually have an enemy or a traditional conflict. The Green Knight seeks to test the honour and bravery of Arthur’s court but there is no apparent penalty for falling short of the Green Knight’s mark save a loss of face. The ‘Other’ in this narrative then is presented not as an enemy but as a benchmark, a ruler against which the merit of Arthurian myth can be measured and judged. The Green Knight and his retainers abide by the human rules of chivalry and honour and simply gauge whether or not Gawain and by extension his culture can do the same.
Perhaps then the measure of a villainous ‘Other’ versus a heroic or neutral ‘Other’ can be determined by how willingly they engage in accepted human cultural conventions for the natives in each narrative. Grendel and his mother fail this test by rejecting the Danish conventions and instead imposing their own moral and ethical judgements on others while Beowulf and the Green Knight both pass because rather than holding others to their own moral and ethical guidelines instead adapt those of local convention. We can use this general guideline for distinguishing villainous ‘Others’ from heroic ‘Others’ we can now move into the literary Renaissance and see if the pattern holds true.
The ‘Others’ found in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene are all embodied representations of the traps that await the good Christian in their attempt to live a righteous and pious life in service to God. Perhaps most notable among them is the witch Duessa who represents duality, the negative aspects of womankind and falsehood. Her role in the narrative shows that she abides by the cultural rules of the majority which suggests that given our guideline determined above from the Medieval works she would be considered at worst a neutral ‘Other’ but her treatment in the actual narrative denies this supposition. It is here that an additional consideration must be made for literature from the Renaissance period, that of political and religious bias that gives an additional slant to the narrative beyond solely cultural concerns. While I am not suggesting that an eye to religious and political bias was not needed in Medieval works I would argue that they were less in the forefront of cultural concerns than they were during the Renaissance period. With the additional lens of Christian morals to our previous guideline Duessa’s duplicitous nature moves her securely into the villainous ‘Other’ category.
Which brings us to the final piece of literature this essay addresses and to the author that is considered by the English speaking world to be one of the greatest poets of all time. Shakespeare’s The Tempest plays with the concept of multiple ‘Others’ each with their own motivations and positions upon the scale from villainous to heroic. It can be argued that within The Tempest there is no character that is not some form of ‘Other’. Prospero and Miranda are foreign to the island, and despite living upon it and making it their home they are applying their Italian cultural conventions on the native spirits and creatures. Caliban is native to the island, son of the previous inhabitant but is an ‘Other’ to the characters the audience is meant to identify with and by extension an ‘Other’ to the audience themselves. The Italians who crash upon the island and find Prospero and Miranda are closest to ‘Native’ from the viewpoint of the audience but are still ‘Others’ to the inhabitants of the island. Indeed despite sharing a cultural touchstone Prospero and the other men are still separated by the years Prospero spent on the island and by his knowledge of magic. So rather than looking at ‘us’ versus ‘them’ or ‘native’ versus ‘other’ The Tempest instead gives the audience a look at conflicts between varying levels of ‘Other’. While the characters through which the audience engages the narrative are assumed to be those in the right one can just as easily sympathize with Caliban and see all the other characters as invaders of his home who have enslaved and degraded him in his own homeland. Our earlier guideline fails here because there is no default culture in context that all the characters can be measured against. Instead one must first choose their side in the struggle and only then can one determine the heroes and the villains of the story.
Then it can be said that Shakespeare’s narrative illustrates the arbitrary nature of determining who is ‘us’ and who is ‘them’ and shows that the ‘Other’ can be anyone. By doing this the construct of the ‘Other’ is shown to be a false perspective that the author uses to enforce the reader’s viewpoint to coincide with the author’s intent. This makes the comparing of Others a largely artificial exercise that reveals more about the inherent biases of the analyst than of the literature in question.
