The Struggle With Longing

I do understand the "I'm a woman" part — my poor girl :( —and kind of whole point of monologue, but I do not understand what Griffith not being a God has to do with it?

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Thanks, hope your day is good as well!

It's a reference to Casca putting Griffith on a pedestal, worshipping him and viewing him as perfect and untouchable - and doing that, in part, to distance herself from her own true feelings and avoid confronting the fact that she loves him.

She basically sublimates her romantic love for him into worship to make the fact that it's one-sided less painful. But eventually she has to admit to herself that Griffith isn't a god, he's just a man, and she's a woman, not an acolyte, and at the end of the day she's just in unrequited love with a guy she likes, who she could in theory be in a relationship with, if Griffith cared about her that way and didn't have other priorities and wasn't gay.

That's the basic answer, but I want to dig into it a bit too.

So there's also the fact that it's a very strong parallel to Guts. She was literally just screaming at him: "Griffith's not a god! A man can't live on dreams and ideals alone! You made Griffith weak! Griffith's no good without you!" Because Guts has also pedestalized Griffith and has been viewing him as a distant god he has to find and pursue a dream in order to reach, a parallel to Casca viewing Griffith as a god and wanting to be his sword.

But the reality is that they're all just people with complicated feelings for each other who all suck at recognizing and talking about those feelings. Guts also needed to internalize the fact that Griffith is just a man, not some untouchable distant figure he has to claw his way up to, and he already had what he left the Hawks to find, as Guts implicitly laments in chapter 71 ("Why do I always see these things... after they're done and gone?") and more explicitly says in chapter 130.

And I mean obviously this parallel is super suggestively homoerotic. Goes without saying but it feels silly to not mention it. What feelings are you burying by viewing Griffith as a distant god, Guts?

And finally, I think this speech is significant in terms of contextualizing the themes of Berserk overall - there's an irony to it, because Griffith literally does become a god. We're first introduced to him as a literal distant godlike figure, in the Black Swordsman arc.

But in Berserk all people, even gods and monsters, are still ultimately just human, as Puck points out when yelling at the Count back in chapter 6.

So I think Casca's line goes hand in hand with that theme, as part of what grounds Berserk's fantasy worldbuilding in real, human emotions. "Griffith's not a god... and I am a woman."

In the ways that really count, that's always going to be true on some level. Griffith will always be a flawed human made weak by Guts, no matter how many astral planes he transcends. All the big worldchanging metaphysical stuff in Berserk still ultimately boils down to human feelings and how they effect people. And the core relationship of three regular human teenagers in a complicated love triangle will always be a driving factor of the story.

And honestly I really like this aspect of Berserk. I'm a sucker for big fantasy setpieces that are ultimately just exaggerated representations of mundane human feelings, and I think that's Berserk to a tee. Like, what is the eclipse but a bad breakup? What is NeoGriffith but a dude who's been fucked over by feelings and keeps himself emotionally distant now? What is the beast of darkness but blackout rage? What are apostles but people who blew up their relationships? etc etc.

Based on at least this interview Miura did have a thing for androgyny so yeah that's likely a factor, though I don't find it uncomfortable. Who doesn't want to fuck Griffith, good for Miura if he wanted to too.

That said, it does fit the themes lol. There's no straight explanation, but imo there is an explanation that goes a little deeper than fun homoeroticism. I've discussed aspects of it before so I'll link a few things.

I have this post about people pedestalizing Griffith and how it facilitates the tragedy of the Golden Age.

This post about how Griffith is a symbol to people and his beauty reflects that.

And this post about his sexual vulnerability and how that's a major theme of his narrative wrt trauma.

Basically Griffith's attractiveness fits his narrative perfectly because his narrative is all about embodying an idealized image of himself to achieve his goals and deny his own vulnerabilty, and how that ultimately fucks him over when everyone including Guts believes that image and doesn't see the real person underneath, and results in him eventually losing everything human about himself and more literally becoming the image when he becomes NeoGriffith. And this is all tied up in trauma as well, which is also related to his beauty, eg Gennon.

Before arriving at any conclusion, we’d first need to compare this panel with a previous one in chapter 50 both are interconnected and show Guts’ perspective on Griffith in two crucial moments in the narrative that change the story forward.

First:

If any of you are curious to read my previous analysis of this panel, here it is.

This panel is all about Guts’ train of thought regarding Griffith: who is he, really? What are his intentions? Why does he behave so differently with Guts? Guts struggles to deny the warmth, care and vulnerability Griffith has shown him previously. It doesn’t align with his concept of him, but at the end, he is open to the possibility that Griffith is much more than just the composed, ruthless, shrewd leader of the Hawks.

Even though the next chapters don’t directly address this moment, we know Guts gets a confirmation of Griffith’s vulnerability when he finds him in his cell, when Wyald exposes Griffith’s wounds to the Hawks, Casca’s words about people being weak and needing dreams and people to rely on and then her decision to stay and take care of Griffith, and finally Griffith overhearing Guts and Casca’s conversation and deciding to escape. A moment from Guts’ narration that stuck with me the most is this: “Why do I always see these things after they are done and gone?”

Having explained this, Guts’ initial denial in the Eclipse makes sense. He had already started to embrace Griffith’s emotional vulnerability, and not only that, he had even started to wonder if he had caused all of this turmoil to Griffith. These were tremendous steps that helped shift Guts’ obliviousness to Griffith’s feelings, so when Guts is faced with the horrendous decision of the Eclipse he resists and yet, memories of Griffith saying what Guts says he would never say come back, proving him wrong.

In the first two memories, Griffith states his idea about his own dream and shows willingness to achieve it, which relents Guts and yet, that memory of Griffith showing concern on how the path to his dream is changing him for bad keeps coming to Guts’ mind. At the end of the day, it is the only instance Griffith shared his doubts and showed to Guts that he wasn’t as willing to do anything that takes, or at least, not without a heavy consciousness.

While Guts’ thoughts about Griffith in chapter 50 lead to the realization that his perspective on Griffith was wrong, Guts’ thoughts in the Eclipse lead to a question.

And there’s something sad about this: could the same Griffith who showed remorse after his schemes, the same Griffith who protected the Hawks from getting their hands “dirty”, the same Griffith who showed Guts how much he cares, be able to do this?

For Guts, the answer is a heartbreaking yes.

For us, the answer is yes and.

Of course Guts ignores the extent of Griffith’s guilt and how it was weaponized to manipulate him to agree. Guts wonders if Griffith has the heart, the willingness, the evil, to sacrifice him and his comrades, but what Guts ignores is that there’s no willingness nor evil under Griffith’s choice, just pure self-loathing and remorse.

And yet, Guts doesn’t make any definitive statement about Griffith after the Eclipse. Of course he hates Femto, but human Griffith continues to be in his mind like his own separate thing. When Guts remembers him Griffith is usually defeated, kneeling in the snow, full vulnerability in display. And when NeoGriffith comes into the picture, he really messes up with Guts’ mind because he looks like the old Griffith, but he acts more faithfully to the image the Old Griffith wanted to project: composed, ruthless, shrewd (of course, Guts ignores that Griffith’s heart is beating when he’s close).

However… At this point Guts doesn’t ignore the fact that NeoGriffith can feel emotions and that they are as (some may argue even more) contradictory as Griffith’s previous emotions. For a guy who says his heart has frozen, seeing him cry and admit he dreams of a nostalgic warmth and wakes up with a faint loneliness… that must be very very confusing.

This is maybe why I’m so frustrated with the new chapters? You know, I’d love to see Guts trying to reconcile all the contradictions in this new version of Griffith as he has been seen to do previously. There’s also the slight hope (very, very, very slight) that Guts makes faster and more incremental progress piecing together Griffith’s feelings. Considering the trauma the eclipse has caused, it seems far-fetched… but considering the first thing Guts did when he saw NeoGriffith was try to gain an emotional reaction from him 🤷🏽‍♀️

Repeating my last criticism of Berserk, I need Guts' complicated emotions about Griffith to resurface. I need him to try to sort out the contradictions, to fixate on his memories, to establish more connections between NeoGriffith and Griffith and consider the possibility that Griffith actually feels so much more than what he says he does. But overall, I need Guts to be right— and confront Griffith about it.

Also Guts, at this point of the story, who believes what Griffith says to others about his feelings? We are dealing with the king of denial!

Lastly, thank you to @beansterpie for pointing out the connection in the notes about the scene in chapter 50 and chapter 79.

When asked about Guts and Casca’s relationship, Miura says those two may appear (to be in love), but they are eternally in the stage before falling in love.  [ Here ]

Sorry that’s just funny because I’ve had so many arguments over the years (and seen so many arguments over the years) about how Guts and Casca are deeply in love and Miura himself was like, yeah they come off that way but they aren’t really there.