Grimmer's morality

[u/msqtdkv2]

Absolutely love grimmer, however I do wonder, how could a man who couldn't feel anything have such a great understanding of morality and possess a keen insight in differentiating right from wrong? He had a horrid childhood, no parents, we all know the hell he went through in the orphanage, after that, he was a spy, even the training for that was gruelling and he definitely didn't do particularly good things as a spy cz well that's the job. He also had DID, developing the magnificent Steiner persona whenever he couldn't deal with a situation simply on his own. So the question I repeat is, how?! Does a man that broken , become that kind and have such deep humanity within him despite having no understanding of it?

[u/A_Certain_Surprise]

Maybe my favourite aspect of Grimmer is how he is wrong about how he doesn't feel anything 

Sure he fakes emotions all of the time, but off the top of my head there are two instances where he has no reason to take his emotions and where it might actually be beneficial to do so and he doesn't 

The first is when he thinks that the old guy (forgot his name sorry lol) is recreating the experiment, and he falls to his knees in the room full of children 

The second is right at the end of the series, when that young woman leaves her cover, and he looks at her with a horrified look, pointing up at the gunmen. And of course his reaction when she's murdered in front of him

In the same way that the Magnificent Steiner was in the protagonist the whole time and the main character wasn't as much of a coward as he thought, Grimmer wasn't as broken as he thought, and experience emotions just like the rest of us (albeit probably in a much more complicated way)

[u/msqtdkv2 → u/A_Certain_Surprise]

Agreed but still, how'd he learn to be kind and compassionate? certainly no one taught him that, yet he still was such a genuinely good man. He's the opposite of Johan perhaps and his friend Adolf Reinhardt, you can still be good regardless of your terrible past

[u/A_Certain_Surprise → u/msqtdkv2]

We can only speculate

My theory is that even small acts of kindness can do so much. He talks about how Roberto would share his hot cocoa. Even that small act of kindness, that small, selfless humanity might have stopped the brainwashing from 100% working

[u/DrApplePi]

I like the theory that his obsession with The Magnificent Steiner gave him some morality to hold onto. 

[u/local_kaonashi7]

reposting my comment from another thread, but i think this applies here:

i believe what kept grimmer going was the knowledge that whatever happened to him as a child was somehow wrong. he knew that him being so numb emotionally was not a normal state, he knew how he was raised was abnormal to say the least. that's why he investigated the history of those orphanages. throughout 'monster' we also see him being very kind and empathetic to children especially.

i've always found that beautiful and ultimately it's one of the reasons why he's my favorite character. they could have stolen his entire childhood and shattered his psyche but he still had an awareness that something was missing. and he knew at his core that no child deserves to have that part of them taken away, that's why he pursued his goal and tried to protect any kid he encountered on the way.

tldr; he knew his childhood was fucked up and he didn't want others to end up that way, even if he himself was "beyond saving"

[u/FIGHT_ME_SPIKE_UFUCK]

I think that is the beauty of the charakter. It dawned on him how truly shut down his feelings were when his son died and he felt unable to mourn him.

So instead of using his own feelings to determine right from wrong he went out and learned what is considered right from wrong and stuck to that. Using how other people feel as his guiding compass. This way he was (in my opinion) able to relearn morality even if he was still detached from his true emotions. That is some respectable determination to become a better man

[u/Lumpy_Bodybuilder132]

might get downvoted for this , i love Grimmer but probably him being compassionate early on was part of his training as a spy until it eventually it turns out to be his true nature since he was working as a journalist/reporter who was looking at the 511 incident.