Grendel had changed drastically from all the way from the start of the book all the way to the end of the book. Grendel began very immature almost child like from the beginning of the book. The way he talked and viewed all things such as plants and animals was very child like. The difference between him and a human would be his monstrous height and strength. Grendel’s first major change was when Grendel heard the words of the Shaper. Grendel would evaluate the Shaper as he would tell his stories in the mead hall, he would do so for many nights. Many times though Grendel would not agree with the stories the Shaper would say and tell to the others, sometimes he felt as if the Shaper was trying to manipulate the others around him. This would anger …show more content…
The other one who helped Grendel learn was the dragon. The dragon tells Grendel of the world and what has happened over time. Grendel would feel fear for the first time after meeting the dragon. Dragon had been said to have been around from around the beginning of time and he tells Grendel all of what he has seen and all that he has witnessed. The dragon tried to make Grendel become a nihilist which means that life is meaningless and the rejection of all moral principles. Grendel began with nihilistic beliefs and slowly moved onto solipsistic beliefs. Solipsism is the belief that you are all that exist and is known in existence. Generally Grendel and the dragon became some sort of buddies this time and Grendel would tell the dragon his plan for what he was going to do to the kingdom. The dragon would tell Grendel to not risk his life to something meaningless such as that. Saying there is no real point in even wasting your breath on the kingdom. He gave Grendel a word of advice before Grendel would leave his cave and told him to not waste your time and to just search for gold the reason being because the dragon only seemed to care for that,
It bears mentioning that Grendel was strongly influenced by the idea of nihilism, which means that he believed that nothing has meaning and everything in life was an accident. “Nevertheless, it was
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...
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.
For ages, humanity has always told stories of the classic struggle between man and monster. The battle between Beowulf and Grendel is a prime example of this archetype, but is Grendel only purely a monster? In his article “Gardner’s Grendel and Beowulf: Humanizing the Monster”, Jay Ruud makes a point that Grendel is a hybridization of both monster and man, particularly in John Gardner’s novel Grendel. In the poem Beowulf, Grendel is depicted as a purely evil monster who terrorizes Hrothgar and his people, but the novel provides a more humanistic backstory to the fiend. Throughout the novel, Grendel tells of his internal struggle between his thoughts of filling the role of the monster versus attempting to make amends with the humans. This conflict
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
He does not act like the blood hungry beast he is seen as in Beowulf. In
Grendel’s first impression was to ask his mother about the meaning of life and what was his part in it. After Grendel’s first encounter with man, he immediately told his mother what had happened. “I tried to tell her all that happened, all that I had come to understand: the meaningless objectiveness of the world…She only stared troubled at my noise”. However, she had lost her ability to speak years ago and only responded with gibberish, not once giving him an answer. Instead when he said, “the world is all pointless accident…I exist nothing else”, she hurried over and seized him pulling him close to her. Realizing that his mother probably doesn’t understand, Grendel was forced to turn to some one else for the answers he needed, so he turned to man.
{1} Grendel, it seems, actually didn’t have too much exposure to humans before the start of the poem. He “hunted the moors” (17), likely subsisting on animals he had killed. The reasons why he started killing humans aren’t entirely clear; he had “growled in pain, impatient / As day after day the music rang / Loud in that hall” (2-4). He could also come across as merely curious, as he was “wondering what the warriors would do in that hall” (31-32). This raises a noteworthy attribute of Grendel – though he is often animalistic, he frequently is described as thinking, wondering, or otherwise displaying a human-like nature. The humans think of him not as a raging beast, but as a calculating criminal. But how calculated were these crimes? Grendel doesn’t seem to have planned his war on Herot, especially not that first night. The statements “[Grendel’s] Thoughts were as quick as his greed of his claws” (35) and “delighted with his night’s slaughter” (40) give the
At first, Grendel says, “...I misunderstood in the beginning: I thought it an advantage” (76). It is suffice to say that soon enough Grendel realises the true nature of the charm and assumes as to why the dragon has inflicted him with what Grendel would come to understand as more of a curse. The charm causes Grendel to feel isolated once again, and when the guard finds and attacks Grendel without provocation, Grendel comes to realise that man will always assume he is the enemy. With the charm, it is all too easy for Grendel to decide to finally fight back against man who he feels has been accusing him unjustly all this time. Grendel almost feel empowered because of the charm, and he was joyful that he now had a purpose and a place in the world. He calls himself “...Grendel, Ruiner of Meadhalls, wrecker of Kings!” (80). This existential crisis Grendel found in realising he was now nearly immortal when it came to man turns into Grendel realising and fulfilling his place in the world that the dragon had talked about. Grendel came to accept his role as man’s antagonist and becomes elated at his new found purpose in life-terrorizing
Grendel, unlike animals, has complex thoughts much like man, which also allows him the power to control his actions. “It was one thing to eat one from time to time….but it was another to scare them, give them heart attacks, fill their nights with nightmares, just for sport.” This shows that Grendel has complete control over his actions because for the first half of the story he lived his life with this in mind (Gardner, 61). This idea soon faded after his encounters with the old dragon and he found joy in killing the Danes for sport. “As if casually, in plain sight of them all, I
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.
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 shows a shift in Grendel’s feelings towards himself as well. After hearing the Shaper’s song, Grendel “...fled, ridiculous hairy creature torn apart by poetry - crawling, whimpering, streaming tears, across the world like a two-headed beast, like mixed-up lamb and kid at the tail of a baffled, indifferent ewe - and I gnashed my teeth and clutched the sides of my head as if to heal the split, but I couldn’t (Gardner, 44).” This clearly shows how the Shaper influenced, quite heavily, Grendel’s shift in viewpoint on life itself. On the surface, Grendel hides his positive outlook on his life, pretending that the Shaper is wrong, and going completely against everything the Shaper attempts to reveal. This only solidifies the Shaper’s optimistic influence on
Grendel is the embodiment of all that is evil and dark. He is a descendant of Cain and like Cain is an outcast of society. He is doomed to roam in the shadows. He is always outside looking inside. He is an outside threat to the order of society and all that is good. His whole existence is grounded solely in the moral perversion to hate good simply because it is good.
“In my youth I engaged in many wars”, Beowulf boasts to his warriors, which is certainly true. Throughout his life, he faces many deadly foes, all of which he handily defeats, save one. His story focuses on the most challenging, as well as morally significant of foes, Grendel and the dragon. These creatures reveal much about society as well as Christian virtue at the time. Even after Grendel and the dragon are defeated physically, the two monsters pose a new threat to the hero on a higher plane. Beowulf is not only at risk of losing his life, but his humanity, virtue, and even spirituality.