Top 10 grudge holders in fiction
Given by The Guardian
10 Works 20,980 Books 511 Reviews 3.9
A grudge is usually characterised as an unreasonable holding on to some wrong, long after the customs of courtesy would allow it. In the popular imagination, the grudge holder is a comical figure, show more absurd if not maligned, eventually relegated to the periphery of society because of their unwillingness to forgive and forget.
But as I started to think about the grudge holders in these books, it became clear that these characters are serious and, accordingly, their grudges ought to be treated seriously. Because what is a grudge but a refusal to go along with social niceties for the comfort of others, to maintain the peace of the status quo? The grudge has a politics of its own.
The difference between, say, righteous anger and a grudge is duration: righteous anger resolves itself in forgiveness or revenge but the grudge lingers. The grudge holder keeps and foregrounds their discomfort, other people’s dismissal of which marks a kind of social violence. They insist on making the wrongs against them visible, in sitting with the difficulty; and in many cases, the wrongs committed against these characters are those arising from unequal and disabling social systems.
[...]
The grudge holder’s ongoing refusal to forgive, the insistence on the unforgivable nature of the wrong committed, amount in these books to a refusal to accept the condition of the world as it is – a refusal that is the basic precondition for a new and changed world.
Sarah Bernstein – LT author page show less
But as I started to think about the grudge holders in these books, it became clear that these characters are serious and, accordingly, their grudges ought to be treated seriously. Because what is a grudge but a refusal to go along with social niceties for the comfort of others, to maintain the peace of the status quo? The grudge has a politics of its own.
The difference between, say, righteous anger and a grudge is duration: righteous anger resolves itself in forgiveness or revenge but the grudge lingers. The grudge holder keeps and foregrounds their discomfort, other people’s dismissal of which marks a kind of social violence. They insist on making the wrongs against them visible, in sitting with the difficulty; and in many cases, the wrongs committed against these characters are those arising from unequal and disabling social systems.
[...]
The grudge holder’s ongoing refusal to forgive, the insistence on the unforgivable nature of the wrong committed, amount in these books to a refusal to accept the condition of the world as it is – a refusal that is the basic precondition for a new and changed world.
Sarah Bernstein – LT author page show less
Work | Order Label |
---|---|
The Merchant of Venice (1600) by William Shakespeare | 1 |
Lote (2020) by Shola von Reinhold | 2 |
Yes, I Am A Destroyer (2020) by Mira Mattar | 3 |
The Employees (2018) by Olga Ravn | 4 |
Tokyo Ueno Station (2014) by Miri Yū | 5 |
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (2009) by Olga Tokarczuk | 6 |
Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) by Jesmyn Ward | 7 |
Extinction (1986) by Thomas Bernhard | 8 |
S. S. Proleterka (2001) by Fleur Jaeggy | 9 |
Storyteller (1981) by Leslie Marmon Silko | 10 |
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