Étiquette : griffith

berserk-confessions:

I don’t think that Casca’s rape was entirely designed to punish Guts
alone. I think there were different reasons for her rape (although most
use her purely as a device to affect others):

1. She was definitely used as a sexual tool to punish Guts. By
   raping her, Griffith was destroying Guts’ dream (i.e. protecting the
   ones he cared about; becoming a better, stronger fighter alongside the
   ones he loved), and he did this because Guts was the only one who
   managed to make Griffith falter and lose sight of his own dream.




2. There is no doubt that Griffith loved Guts. His love was not
   necessarily sexual in nature, although it was as deep as a lover’s
   relationship. I doubt it could be described as friendship because
   Griffith’s idea of true friendship was to have someone truly equal to
   him, yet at the same time, he could never allow anyone to actually
   become good enough to rival him (there is only one who can rule a
   castle…) and so I do not think he really believed that anyone could
   have managed to be that true friend. If he had really felt that Guts
   was a true friend, Guts would have become his enemy at the same time.
   So, when Guts left the Band of the Hawk, Griffith not only felt that he
   had been abandoned by the one person he loved, but he realized that
   there was someone who could rival him, a possible true friend – and
   therefore enemy. He rapes Casca to punish Guts for not only abandoning
   him, but for abandoning him to seek out his own dream, something which
   could topple Griffith as it was the one thing that would have made Guts
   an equal.  




3. Casca’s rape was also used as the means for Griffith to destroy his
   own human weaknesses. After Griffith was rescued, it was not Guts, but
   Casca who decided to stay and care for him. Griffith knew this, and,
   fuelled by a mix of his jealously/anger towards Guts’ love for Casca, a
   desperate need for comfort in his weakened state, as well as a need to
   comfort a person who cared for him so deeply, Griffith threw his weak
   body onto Casca it a pseudo-attempt at rape/sexual intimacy (remember,
   when he is vulnerable, he seeks out sex – even though it has other,
   useful motives for him at the same time, see his sleeping with
   the governor and the princess for reference). Just as rape is about
   control and overpowering a person’s autonomy, Griffith was symbolically
   owning his past weaknesses by overriding the autonomy of the one person
   who loved him and treated him with pity, Casca.




4. I think part of Griffith’s anger was also aimed at Casca directly.
   Yes, she is used as a sexual tool to punish Guts, but I think Griffith
   also wanted to hurt her. Griffith noticed that Casca and Guts
   were in love. He noticed it when she wiped away the blood from Guts’
   face and when they were talking about what to do with Griffith outside
   the wagon. In the latter situation, Guts offered to stay when Casca told
   him that she couldn’t leave Griffith. Griffith was jealous of the fact
   that Guts loved Casca enough to abandon his own dreams for her, whereas
   Guts had previously refused to abandon his dream for Griffith – Casca
   didn’t even have to ask Guts to stay, where Griffith practically begged
   Guts, and Guts still refused. For that reason he hates Casca. She was,
   unknowing to Griffith until that point, a genuine rival for the number
   one spot in Guts’ heart, and considering the fact that Griffith cannot
   allow anyone to surpass him in any way, he raped Casca as punishment for
   beating him in that one instance.




5. I think Griffith chose to rape Casca because he knew the what the
   symbolic impact of being raped would have on her. His torture was not
   only the physical trauma of being raped (in fact I think that was the
   lesser punishment), but the mental. Casca has never been in control of
   her own destiny, not until she made the decision to leave with Guts,
   anyway. She has always lived for Griffith, partly out of love and
   loyalty, but also, deep inside, because she felt that serving Griffith
   was giving her purpose. She was entirely dependent on Griffith, living
   off of his dream to give herself meaning. He was very much aware of this
   – when the aristocrat tried to rape her as a child he threw her the
   sword and symbolically asked her whether she could be strong enough to
   forge her own destiny, to create and follow her own dream. He realised
   the answer to that question when she asked to serve him – that she
   wasn’t going to follow her own dream, that she wasn’t capable of being
   that ‘true friend’. When he found out that Casca was in love with Guts
   and that she, at one point, was going to leave with him, he realized
   that Casca was actually now following her own dreams, and no longer
   relying on Griffith’s to give herself purpose. The rape was partially
   punishment for this, and partially also because she chose to abandon her
   dream and decided to tie herself back to Griffith when she realized she
   couldn’t abandon him in his weakened state.




6. Raping her, instead of killing her, was a symbolic act. It was
   through rape that they first met, and it was through rape that their
   relationship ends – he is no longer the Griffith that Casca knew. He
   also knew that it would have a greater impact on her than death would. I
   think in some ways, she was more afraid of rape than she was of death,
   because rape epitomized the loss of control over oneself – something
   which she lacks already with her almost-blindly loyal servitude to
   Griffith. Him raping her is the greatest punishment he can inflict on
   her, and I feel that it is the fact that Casca realised that Griffith is
   actually cruel enough to use such a fear of hers against her, and
   against Guts, which is what sent her over the edge (not so much the
   physical trauma, although that is, of course, incredibly traumatic as
   well).