Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Essay on symbolism in literature
Importance of symbolism in literature
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Object Equality
Though these two stories are told from opposite perspectives, Grendel and his counterpart from Beowulf are almost exactly interchangeable in both action as well as thought, since both characters’ main conflict, as well as the climax, are perfectly symmetrical. How could they not? They are both the exact same character, the same monstrous quadruped that terrorizes the same Danish kingdom. The amount of similarities present is insurmountable. Both renditions of Grendel go through isolation, are subject to insurmountable suffering, as well as sharing a sense of incredulous hatred towards mankind.
Though many similarities are present between these two transcriptions of Grendel’s story, the most pronounced has to be the sense of
…show more content…
Mankind’s first motive for murder. Grendel’s hatred towards mankind drives him to smother the life out of armfuls of men at a time. In the novel, Grendel is quoted as uttering, “It wasn't because he threw that battle-ax that I turned on Hrothgar. That was mere midnight foolishness... It wasn't until later, when I was full-grown and Hrothgar was an old, old man, that I settled my soul on destroying him—slowly and cruelly,” (Grendel 30). This quote allows the reader to understand why Grendel kills, why he is full of so much ignominy toward mankind. This is parallelized in Beowulf, with the poem enumerates “Out from the marsh, from the foot of misty Hills and bogs, bearing God’s hatred, Grendel came, hoping to kill,” (Beowulf 269-271). Howbeit, while the latter quote speaks of animosity towards Grendel himself, the former deals with Grendel’s hatred outward, towards others. Regardless of this difference, the theme is tantamount, the hatred is continually …show more content…
Grendel is a pitiful creature. He has no interaction with anyone other than his mother and the dragon. He is hated by man and alone, and he suffers. At just the beginning of Grendel, the monster declares, “And so begins the twelfth year of my idiotic war. The pain of it! The stupidity!” (Grendel 5). For over a decade he has been at war with the humans, for 4,383 days, he has been fighting mankind. He has suffered through his adolescence into the age where he is mature. He suffers due to his ancestors, which Beowulf explains nicely with the quote, “Murderous creatures banished By God, punished forever for the crime Of Abel’s death,” (Beowulf 21-23). Both examples of Grendel have only known suffering, their entire lives. If you were to put both of them in a room together, there would be more empathy between the two that thought imaginable. Grendel’s suffering at the hands of God, and mankind, is one of the utmost pronounced similarities between Grendel from Grendel and Grendel from
In both works, Beowulf and Grendel, Grendel himself is generally given the same connotations. He is given kennings, called names, referred to as the evil spawn of Cain, and even viewed as a monster; but why? Why in both books is he a wicked, horrible, person who is harshly excluded from everyone? After stumbling upon John Gardner's book, it was halfway expected that some excuse would be made for Grendel; that he wasn't really the inexorable monster the thanes in Beowulf portrayed him as. But all it really did was make him worse. What is the message we are being sent about Grendel?
Our first character, Grendel, is an exceptionally diverse character. It is implied that in both book and poem, Grendel is a blood-thirsty monster. All Grendel does is go through meadhalls and kill the drunk, often asleep people. But when narrated through the eyes of Grendel, the true nature of this beast is discovered. The author of Grendel entails that Grendel is a depressed and misunderstood monster, restrained to the confinements of his own underwater cave. He is a lot like the monster in the book Frankenstein. Both Grendel and Frankenstein are born with no real purpose to life, going off of what they hear other people say and taking it as the truth. Both monsters, knowing that everyone detests them for being unattractive and different, retaliate by way of murder and mayhem. From the perspective of the people in the stories itself, Grendel is exactly how the narrator in the poem Beowulf makes him out to be. The people, or the thanes, of Hrothgar’s kingdom see Grendel as a demon from hell, representing all that’s evil in the world. He’s a supernatural creature and in this time period anything supernatural that wasn’t human was considered a spirit, a god, evil or, in Grendel...
Rudd cites various sections of the poem, describing Grendel as a “night-monster of the border lands” (Rudd 3), and the translation of the poem says that Grendel was, “...Conceived by a pair of those monsters born Of Cain, murderous creatures banished By God…” (Raffel 42). Rudd also gives evidence for Grendel being seen as demonic, and reasons that Grendel attacks the Danes out of “...not mere thirst for gore, as we might suspect… but rather… envy of the Danes’ happiness- and envy was a chief characteristic of the medieval devil.” (Ruud 5). He then ties this devilish persona to Grendel’s humanistic aspects, stating Grendel has a heathen soul, and therefore he must be human. Ruud also notes, however, that there are critics who question the validity of portraying Grendel as this three-sided figure, asking questions such as, “How can Grendel be a devil when he has a physical body? How can he be a man when he is so manifestly bestial?” (Ruud 7). Ruud believes that the original poet of Beowulf is doing this for effect rather than consistency, but a more reasonable explanation that encompasses all three characteristics is that Grendel represents the evil in
One aspect that was the most apparent was the fact that he was such an outcast. In Beowulf, Grendel was “…living down in the darkness, growl[ing] in pain…” because he knew that he did not belong with the Danes and other human beings at all (Raffel 6). Similarly, in Grendel, as interested as he was with the humans and their way of life, he still found himself “…back[ing] away till the honeysweet lure of the harp no longer mocked [him]” (Gardner 4). Grendel was constantly distancing himself from the human beings because he knew he did not belong and they were not willing to give him the gift of acceptance into their group. However, this outlook carried through with Grendel between the two stories to portray just how monstrous and estranged he
Grendel looks like. The only idea the reader has of the sight of Grendel is
Grendel, written by John Gardner, is a novel based off the early epic poem, Beowulf. Gardner tells the tale in the perspective of the monster, Grendel, who is struggling to understand the purpose of life and his place in the world. In Gardner’s novel, Grendel terrorizes the kingdom of Hrothgar for 12 years, killing men in the night relentlessly. With the descriptions of battles and heroic deeds, Gardener conveys to the reader, the ideals of Anglo-Saxon heroes as courageous, self-righteous, humble, and loyal beings that are humanly flawless. The book Grendel tears down all these fundamental ideologies of Anglo-Saxon heroism by giving Grendel the monster a nihilist perspective that makes heroism sound stupid and meaningless.
While Grendel may possess a brute strength, his lack of wit and logic is what ultimately leads to his downfall and demise. In Beowulf, the actions and character that of Beowulf, or an Epic Hero, define the perfect Anglo-Saxon warrior. Epic heroes are indicated by a variety of traits, including that they, “must look like a hero, they must be noble, famous, strong, courageous, humble, prideful, thick-skinned, self-sacrificing, faithful, focused, be a leader, and have a tragic flaw” (Jones 3). Unfortunately, aside from the ‘tragic flaw’ and ‘strong’ categories, Grendel’s character is antithetical to all characteristics of an Epic Hero. This makes him quite the villain, and a generally despicable character. “Suddenly then, / the God-cursed brute creating havoc: / greedy and grim, he grabbed thirty men”
Grendel then began to show even more human traits than before. He became envious their happiness and starting becoming the cruel one. He started torturing and killing humans quite frequently. He starts to enjoy being cruel during his first raid. “I felt a strange, unearthly joy. It was as if I’d made some incredible discover, like my discovery long ago of the moonlit world beyond the mere. I was transformed” (79). This kind of cruelness came easily to Grendel, not unlike the humans had watched for so long. Grendel slowly becomes more and less human. He starts to lose his humanity but shows off just how human he is. Grendel becomes what he hates the most, cruel and pointless. Though Grendel enjoys the human’s suffering, it only makes him feel worse. “I feel my anger coming back, building up like invisible fire, and at last, when my soul can no longer resist, I go up - as mechanical as anything else - fists clenched against my lack of will, my belly growling, mindless as wind, for blood” (Gardner 9). Grendel falls into the trap and start to enjoy the suffering of others. While this isn’t a problem at first, Grendel eventually realizes just how pointless this is. How pointless everything is. Grendel sees that the world doesn’t do anything for anyone. He won’t be given anything and he probably won’t ever be happy. As a result, Grendel learns to live with this hatred and continues
John Gardner’s Grendel is the retelling of the heroic epic poem Beowulf; however, the viewpoint has shifted. Grendel is told from the viewpoint of one of Beowulf’s antagonists and the titular character of Gardner’s work—Grendel. In Grendel, Gardner humanizes Grendel by emphasizing parallels between Grendel’s life and human life. Through Gardner’s reflection of human feelings, human development, and human flaws in Grendel, this seemingly antagonistic, monstrous character becomes understood and made “human.”
Beowulf wants to fight Grendel, a monster wreaking havoc, and is boasting that he is more powerful and courageous.
Beowulf and Grendel (Gunnarsson 2005) depicts a very different protagonist than the one in the epic (Heaney 2000). The Beowulf in the film learns how to have mercy as the movie progresses, while the epic Beowulf is very flat. This is due to the fact that the modern culture is very different from that of the epic. Our culture isn't content with such characters. We want our characters to have more lifelike characteristics such as emotions and a change of heart.
This is controlled by appetite and impulse, as seen in Grendel 's drastic urges to go on a killing spree in the mead hall killing the drunken Danes. Grendel hides away watching everything and everyone: hiding behind sheds or in a tree. Grendel speaks of his longings for friendships; of his captivity in his mythical role; of his disdain for his roots, as seen in the quote describing is an affinity for his mother. "When I sleep, she presses close to me, half buries me under her thistly fur and fat. Dool-Dool," she moans. She drools and weeps. "Warrovish," she whimpers, and tears at herself. Hanks of fur come away in her claws. I see gray hide." (Gardner 146) Where as, in the poem Beowulf, Grendel is made out to be a savage monster full of evil just looking to kill with no sense of remorse or good qualities. These qualities are seen when the narrator speaks "Out from the marsh, from the foot of misty hills and bogs, bearing God 's hatred, Grendel came, hoping to kill." (285 - 287) Giving the appearance and goals Grendel portrayed in the epic poem
Descriptions of gruesome events, such as the one narrated by Grendel, set some fear into the mood of the events taking place. They also make the reader feel some of the fear that the humans are suffering in the hands of Grendel. While Grendel is going around killing every soldier in proximity, he thinks to himself, before being confronted by Beowulf, “I seize up a sleeping man, tear at him hungrily, bite through his bone-locks and suck hot, slippery blood,” (Gardner 168). Gardner describes how the soldiers were murdered in a way that portrays what the Danes’ feel when they think of Grendel. The adjectives used to describe the blood, and even the mention of the blood, causes a reader to feel uneasiness and horror. Just the action of him ravaging through the mead hall sets the negative tone. Overall, imagery is used constantly throughout, and represents the theme in a subtle way, compared to the other literary
Anger then yields itself to insecurity and low self-esteem. The moment Grendel realizes that there is someone just as strong as him, he tries to run away, ". . . Grendel's one thought was to run / From Beowulf, flee back to his marsh and hide there:" (437-438), but it is too late. Just like when the average bully meets his match, he runs in fear of not being able to win. Grendel does not have the audacity to stand up to Beowulf with all his might and therefore falls to Beowulf.
Grendal, a descendant of Cain, is one of the main antagonist of the poem Beowulf. He lives under an inherited curse and is denied God’s presence. Throughout the story Grendal causes enormous grief and fear to the people of Herot. After so much pain and agony the king of Herot, Hrothgar, sends for the protagonist of the poem, Beowulf. He is a Geat and the epic hero of the poem. The wide variety of distinctions between Grendal and Beowulf is what develops the climax of the composition. Beowulf kills Grendal, so he is honored by the people of Herot for his heroic act. Since Grendal and Beowulf play opposite roles in the poem, Beowulf, they let the reader know how contrasting characters can develop the plot of the story.