The Monster at the End of This Essay
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that what Oscar the Grouch really needs is Paxil. On the contrary, sometimes a
Snuffleuppagus trunk is just a Snuffleuppagus trunk. However, if we see Grover
as going through a psychoanalytic struggle where his very identity—his sense of
self—hangs in the balance, there are parts of the narrative that open up for us in
a helpful way.
Grover has always been something of an outsider. On Sesame Street he
is clearly the most sensitive character and the one to whom, at least in the past,
children most readily bestow their love. In the old television segments in which
a child interacts with Grover, his gentle way of speaking to and understanding
children clearly put these kids at ease, and Grover’s self-identification as
someone who is timid and different and “outside” the normal power relations
gave children something with which to identify." There is an ineffable sense of
Otherness to Grover that at once separates him and makes us relate to him.
Grover is better educated than the rest of the Muppets. His vocabulary is richer;
his Jokes often more cerebral. Grover never speaks using contractions; and this
quirk—or perhaps affectation—gives him a distinctive speech pattern that
separates him from others. Frank Oz, the original operator of the Grover Muppet
and the creator of Grover’s voice, used a similar voice for his Star Wars
creation, Yoda. Given their nearly identical vocal patterns, in a dark room it
would be hard to tell Grover and Yoda apart except for their two rather unique
senses of grammar and syntax. Never a Jedi Master, Grover would make—but at
the same time, Yoda does not have any of the vulnerability and co mplexity that
Grover possesses. And it is precisely these qualities that separate Grover from
all of the other Muppets on Sesame Street.
Grover, in general, doesn’t like to play tricks on other people, doesn’t
poke fun at others, and doesn’t intentionally cause problems. In the classic
Sesame Street sketches meant to teach children the difference between “near and
far,” Grover—in his infinite patience—may grow weary of running back and
forth to illustrate the points, but he never becomes hostile. And in the restaurant
sketches—recurring scenes in which Grover plays a waiter taking the order of a
balding blue-skinned man—fainting in exasperation is often the outcome, but
the problem with the customer’s order is typically either caused by the system
itself (a system which Grover, as a mere member of the proletariat, is unable to
alter) or by Grover’s own over-enthusiastic desire to be helpful and efficient.
Given any Sesame Street scene with Grover in it, there is thus, more often than
not, a sense of Grover’s guilt, vulnerability, and unease in his own blue fur.
As a psychoanalytic text, then, we see Grover in The Monster at the
End of This Book as Other to himself, Grover fearing himself—fearing, perhaps,
a way of being in the world such that there is no longer stable identity. Fear is
Grover’s main way of encountering himself, an emotion Freud and Heidegger
remind us is close to shame. And the shame of being, the fear of being Other to
one’s self, is with all of us always—the necessary implication of our times and
the death of the simplistic, coherent, modernist subject. Grover, a sort of
Everyman (or perhaps Everymonster) not so much confronts his fears in this text