Frankenstein And Grendel Comparison Essay

One In The Same Grendel and the fiend in Frankenstein are characters from two different stories. Even though they entered the world in different ways, they can be seen as being the same character because of the amount of qualities they share like: showing interest in art, living their life as outsiders, and growing up innocent then turning into the true monsters they are. Grendel is an intelligent monster who is capable of being just as human as anyone else in John Gardner’s novel. Aside from Grendel’s hideous appearance and his emotional outbursts, there was very little that separated him from the rest of the world. Just like the Danes, Grendel was moved by the words that were being spoken out of the Shaper’s mouth. He was moved by the

The monster was not always evil. He was innocent in the beginning. He was kind and sensitive to other people’s feelings. “The gentle manners and beauty of the cottagers greatly endeared them to me; when they were unhappy, I felt depressed; when they rejoiced, I sympathized in their joys” (Shelley 131). People did not understand that the monster possibly could have been the gentlest soul that they would have ever met, but they did not give him the chance. They relied too much on his external appearance to assume that he was wicked. Grendel and the monster wanted to experience having someone to talk to, but since they did not receive this friendship, they became the actual monsters people thought they were in the first place. In John Gardner’s novel, Grendel, and the monster in Frankenstein, have multiple characteristics that are similar. They are characters from different books, so how is it possible that they can be alike? Even though they come from different stories, they are identical because of the different qualities they possess like being extremely powerful and living as the “brute existence by which humankind learns to define itself” (Gardner 73). These two characters ultimately are one in the