Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane discussion

In Gregor and the Prophesy of Bane, 11 year old Gregor returned to the Underland and quickly found, due to prophesy, his younger sister was being hunted to protect the rat Bane. After questing to find and kill the Bane, he discovered it was a baby and chose not to.

One theme I found in this book was that, there’s always more to a person than a stereotype. When Gregor and his sister “Boots” ventured into the Underland they met all kinds of new creatures. There were giant cockroaches, rats, spiders, and bats. Even the humans were odd with their translucent skin and violet eyes. Each group had their own stereo types in the underworld. Rats were evil and greedy, cockroaches were fraidy cats, spiders were selfish, and bats were deemed servants. However, as Gregor came to know each one, he realized that none quite matched their stereotype. While the creatures may have had some portrayed traits, each usually had their own special skill as well. Gregory was able to bond with each creature until he ultimately stopped seeing everyone with stereotypes. The rat shared food with his sister, the cockroach saved his sister, the spider gave its life for Gregor, and his bat showed him that he was not a servant. After realizing creatures weren’t always what they were made out to be, helped Gregor to make his ultimate decision not to kill the baby Bane.

Gregor faced two main conflicts in this book- internal, and external. The external conflict was his quest to kill the Bane (white and by legend most evil rat). Many things came between him and this conflict: the serpents, other rats, lethal mites, and a maze. His internal conflict, in my opinion, was the far greater one. From the beginning of the journey Gregor struggled with treating all creatures with him equally, and with respect, and he was afraid because it was prophesized that his sister will be killed. The conflict was furthered when he discovered he was a rager- meaning once he began to fight he struggled to stop. He hated conflict, and accepting this new truth about himself and learning to control it was hard. He had to accept the new stereotypes on himself that came with being a rager. When he thought boots was going to die, he stopped trying and let himself become distant and cold hearted. He no longer felt emotion, and only longed to kill the bane and get revenge. He was finally snapped out of this ice, and forced to confront both conflicts when he discovered the rat was a baby. It reminded him so much of boots that he became emotional, and had to decide what to do. His heart won, and he kept the rat alive with the hope that it could grow up and become good. His decision gave conclusion to the theme that all creatures could be good.

Either I am not a very harsh book critic, or I've been getting very lucky; every book I’ve read this term was chosen by someone else… and I loved them all. I have to say the Gregory books have definitely been less challenging and more for entertainment, but they both still taught lessons. I especially loved how fast paced this book was… it made it easy to sit down and read for five hours straight (not that I had to do that to get them done in time or anything), but I actually enjoyed doing it. The characters were all simply based with stereotypes, but got more complex and were easy to relate to. I especially liked that we don’t ever figure everything out about certain characters- making it so I could make my own conclusions or wonder rather than having everything neatly wrapped up and finished with a bow. I’d recommend this book for younger readers, or older readers looking for entertainment.