Response to “The Grotto”

The Grotto, by Robert Oland Butler, made me think about the human nature to fear what we do not understand. When Miss Summerfield is in her hotel in Alexandria she awakes during the night to hear an Egyptian man “calling the Mohammedan faithful to prayer”. She then turns away from the window and recites the Lord’s Prayer “over and over until the voice outside ceased” and she fell asleep. I think that she feared the strangeness of the man’s religion and because of this, turned to her own religion for comfort in a new land. Although the man calling on Islamic people to pray unnerved her enough to have to drown out the words by praying to her own god, in a way, she is very similar to the man as they are both worshiping their own religions during that night. Miss Summerfield does not realize this similarity until it is made more obvious in an encounter with an Egyptian man the next day. She is walking in a garden on a tour and she finds a grotto. As she explores it she finds a large Egyptian man sitting on a bench by a waterfall. At first she is scared and is about to leave though the man apologizes and she thinks: “Once again I found myself suspended in-between my fear of new things and my wish for them”. She decided to stay for a while out of fear of offending him if she was to leave. However, she breaks down in tears at the memory of her mother. She then learns that the man also had lost his mother and that he too is very devoted to his own god. Through this course of events her fears of the man are transformed to a simple understanding between them because of their similar situations. This made me think of how often people fear what they do not understand; once they take the time to learn about it, they find that it is not that worthy of their fear. This is why I believe that people should have a more open mind towards other cultures and people and I think that The Grotto demonstrates this idea.