There is a book somewhere, a marvelous and simple children's book, called "The Monster at the End of This Book." The protagonist is Grover. The plot is clear-cut: Grover knows the title and lives in dread fear of encountering the monster. He attempts to escape the book, but to no avail. He begs the reader not to turn the page, and flails in frustration and terror every time the reader continues. He pleads, he cajoles, but the inexorable progress of the book stampedes him toward his nemesis: the book-ending monster.

Obviously, the monster at the end of the book is he. You can imagine his relief. But in the process of watching his travails, we have participated in a form of sadism. If you are to any extent absorbed by Grover, you are complicit in the crime of bringing Grover face-to-face with his own nightmare. I have seen children hunched over the book, deliberating whether to turn the page.

Perhaps you are old enough or worldly enough to know that they couldn't very well have a huge monster eat Grover at the end of the book. You still are fascinated by watching him squirm.

There is a larger issue here: What is the purpose of Grover in the Sesame Street Milieu? The book is reasonably typical of Grover's exploits in trepidation and fecklessness. Witness SuperGrover, who not only consistently fails to save the day, but usually hurts himself dramatically in the process. Or consider perhaps Grover's most famous work, "This is Near...This is Far". He repeats the dichotomy incessantly, until it is clear that you've got it, but he's still going.

Is the function close to sadism? The argument could be made that he is there to make children feel empowered, by being more powerful than Grover. After all, the adult world can be daunting sometimes, and it is good to know that there is still somebody who is weaker, more feckless, and more generally hopeless than you are.

I think, however, that the idea, at least, is that Grover represents the timidity and failures of us all. After all, SuperGrover may fail miserably, and crash into a garbage can or two in the process, but he lives on to face another day. Similarly, the message in TMATEOTB is clear: sometimes we have nothing to fear but fear itself (leaving aside the earth-shattering revelation that sometimes we have nothing to fear but OURSELVES). Whenever you see Grover with a human child, he is always subservient and loving, and wants only attention. He is like the perpetual youngest kid who doesn't know what's going on, but wants to have fun, too.

Basically, Grover is the personification of weakness. Part of learning about the world is learning our own weaknesses and being cognizant, and tolerant, of others'. Although the occasional joy of watching Grover suffer may actually be good for us, as well.