My summer reading book was Grendel by John Gardner. The tale of Grendel was about the monster named Grendel, his life, and explorations leading up to his death. The novel had many different themes and lessons to be taught from Grendel’s many misfortunes.
Grendel a large beastly creature is in a twelve year war with mankind, mainly being Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, owner of the mead hall that Grendel terrorizes and destroys continuously, the mead hall holding all the Danes treasure. The novel skips back and forth in time from when Grendel was a child exploring the world and discovering the human world for the first time. One of his first expeditions to the human world, Grendel gets caught in a tree and attacked by both a bull, and a band
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As a child, Grendel becomes fascinated by the human’s ways and culture. He watches them evolve from nomadic tribal people to an updated system of people that have roads, governments and militaries that make organize attacks on other communities. Grendel watches Hrothgar reach power as the most powerful King in the surrounding areas. Hrothgar’s power attracts the attention of the Shaper, a poetic singer that sings of glorified tales of the Danish people and heroes. Grendel seeing the evolution of men and knows the truth of the tales finds the shapers songs alluring and becomes ashamed of his own malicious nature. Inspired by the shapers tales Hrothgar orders a mead hall to be built that he calls Hart. Grendel increasingly irritated with his ashamed feelings due to the shapers tale goes and visits a Dragon that says that all human philosophies are irrelevant and wrong. Grendel adopts his philosophy and becomes increasingly mad at the Danish men causing him to start the twelve year war with the Danish men raiding the Hart mead hall. Hrothgar gets threaten by other kings that causes him to attack the King of the Helmings Hygmod. Hygmod in order to avoid war offers his sisters hand in marriage to Hrothgar and …show more content…
Grendel throughout the book is in constant isolation with the human world and his own. In the realm that Grendel is from, the monsters and beasts do not obtain the intelligence to speak with Grendel, which Grendel himself seems to be far more intelligent than them. Grendel’s own mother in the story cannot even speak with him she relies on an emotional response for when she feels he is distressed, she holds him like you would hold a baby or she stares blankly at him when he questions her about the world even when he was a child. There was only one time that Grendel’s mother really did try to speak with him and all she said was, “drool drool.” In the human world Grendel is curious about human philosophies and understandings of the world around them but he is continually isolated from them because every encounter with mankind he has, even when he is a child, ends with them chasing him off or trying to kill him. Mankind misunderstands him and chase him away even with his first encounter with them as a child in the tree. The men think he is a God that they need to feed, which he laughs at, making the men think that Grendel is angry so they try to kill him. Thankfully Grendel’s mother comes and saves him from the men but she still never speaks to him. Grendel realizes and acknowledges even when he was a child that he and mankind are very similar creatures that is why I believe that he constantly revisits the communities
He derives a satisfaction from his interactions with the Danes that he cannot get from interactions with any other creature. violent outbursts and antagonistic relationship with humans can be seen as the result of a lonely creature’s misunderstood attempts to reach out and communicate with someone else. Grendel was amused by the humans, observing of their violence that (ch 3) He was sickened by the waste of their wars, all the animals killed but not eaten. Ashamed of his monstrousness, what better that to be like the thing you envy the most.
The story begins with Grendel taking the lives of countless innocent men. It seems to all that there is no one who can face this great monster who lives down in the swamp. The king, Hrothgar, becomes concerned for the health of his country and seeks out help from someone of great strength. In hearing this, Beowulf sees it as an opportunity to increase his popularity and fame. Upon arrival, he is anxious to come face to face with the great beast. In addition, he declares that he will fight Grendel without any weapons to prove who is truly the strongest. After his victory, Beowulf gets his fame and becomes king of another land for fifty years.
Since the beginning Grendel is very confused with why he can’t talk or get along with people or animals. He starts off wandering through the forest when he gets caught in a tree. Grendel cries out for his mom but is disappointed to be without her arrival. He later encounters a bull that nearly kills him but instead ends up wounded. Grendel could not communicate with the animal and out of this encounter he perceives life in a nihilistic way. After waking up from his sleep humans wearing armor surround him and believed him to be a tree spirit. Grendal tried to speak to them but again he had failed to do so. Finding out he wasn’t, they became hostile but fled after hearing Grendel's mother.
Grendel as a character is very intelligent, he is capable of rational thought at all times. Because of this, at sometimes during the story I would forget Grendel is a monster, the way he acts in his thoughts and actions I would mistake him for a human; at times I was even feeling bad for Grendel because he is a very lonely person who tries to understand all of the meaningless of the world around him. Grendel can never get to close to
Soon afterwards however, Grendel meets man. While they first mistake him as being a part of the tree, they immediately give a violence to him when they assume that “the spirit’s angry” and that “it always has been… [and] that’s why it’s killing the tree” (Gardner 26). In his very first instance with man, they tell Grendel that he is inherently angry and murderous. This starts the evolution in Grendel to feed the violence within him. Before he interacts with man, he knew his place in the world and he would never kill without a justified purpose. Even after observing man for some time, Grendel “was sickened, if only by the waste of” (Gardner 36) the countless animals and men that they would kill and leave to rot. Grendel still has a sense of worth to the creature’s life around him, if only if it is to keep a sustainable food source. After however, he begins to become infatuated with man’s ways and their views. Scott Kenemore states, “Grendel's encounters with humans … present him with a colorful variety of worldviews and ideologies”.
The fact having Grendel as the main character makes it even more interesting because is almost kind of unknown. I describe him as the unknown because you really do not know what he really is. At one point he is kind of confusing because he is both characterized as a human and a monster who kills and eats humans. How awful is that? Grendel can be scary but at the same time who feel sort of sorry for him when he describes being lonely with the desire of companion. For example, I felt kind of sorry for him because he is being alone in situations that seem kind of tough. But in the other hand Grendel eats humans and that is kind of scary. Although Grendel would eat humans, I do not blame him because that is what he was thought to do in a way. It’s like following the same step you are thought to do. That is Grendel’s case. He was not really thought it was wrong to do so, he was in a way confused and all he wanted to do was to understand his place in a potentially meaningless
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.
Grendel is born a neutral being, perhaps even good, but nevertheless, without hate. The transition which he undergoes to become evil is due to misunderstandings between himself and humans and also meeting with a dragon who is questionably evil. As a young “monster”, Grendel knew nothing other than the cave he lived in and his mother who could not speak any distinguishable language. He was a playful creature who seemed to be like a “bla...
Beowulf outlines turmoil between three opponents: Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the Dragon. These separate discords each serve to fulfill different metaphoric purposes. Grendel’s character epitomizes the adverse persona of how an Anglo-Saxon warrior should not be. His mother represents everything that a woman during the time era should seldom be. Lastly, the Dragon embodies all the values that an Anglo-Saxon king should not dare retain. Without a doubt, the symbolic implications of the monsters in Beowulf bring the context to a new level of understanding.
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
Grendel and the humans share a common language, but the humans’ disgust for, and fear of Grendel precludes any actual meaningful exchange.
Grendel feels like an outcast in the society he lives in causing him to have a hard time finding himself in the chaotic world. He struggles because the lack of communication between he and his mother. The lack of communication puts Grendel in a state of depression. However, Grendel comes in contact with several characters with different philosophical beliefs, which allows his to see his significance in life. Their views on life influence Grendel to see the world in a meaningful way.
In the beginning Grendel’s perspective of himself leads to various encounters that help him discover the meaninglessness to his very own existence. From the beginning through many centuries of pondering Grendel has come to the idea that the world consists entirely of Grendel and not-Grendel. Thus Grendel begins his search for meaning of his very own life with an existential philosophy, the belief that emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will. While Grendel’s overall perspective of nature is that of mindless and mechanical machine, he believes that he is a separate entity from this machine. Furthermore he holds the philosophy that he himself is a god like creature that “blink by blink” creates the world. This philosophy undermined when Grendel notices that events occur before he can think them into existence. Grendel witnesses the death of a deer by the hands of humans: “Suddenly time is a rush for the hart: head flicks, he jerks, his front legs buckling, and he’s dead. He lies as still as the snow hurtling outward around him to the hushed world’s rim. The image clings to my mind like a
As a creature of evil, Grendel finds absolutely no one he can consider a companion. He constantly finds himself feeling alone, even if he is around humans or even his mother. Grendel is always around other living beings but it seems it is hard for him to connect to them, since he is seen as a monster in everyone else’s eyes. He is either too human or too monstrous for anyone to make him less lonely. The theme of isolation and loneliness is present throughout the novel, making it very important and significant to the characterization of Grendel in the story.
Grendel is alone; he can not know God’s love and be comforted. He is an outcast, and the sins of his forefather have fallen upon him. Evil can not stand God being glorified just as the praising of God by the Danes angered Grendel.