Grendel, a book written by John Gardner, retells the epic of Beowulf from the perspective of a lonely monster who struggles to find his purpose. By peering into the life and perspective of Grendel, Gardner encapsulates the themes of, “form is function” and nihilism vs. existentialism. These themes coincide with Gardner’s childhood. On their family farm, Gardner had a cultipacker, a machine that crushes dirt clumps and creates a smooth seedbed. One day he drove the cultipacker with his siblings Sandy and Gilbert. The engine ran out of gas and jolted on a downward incline. Gilbert was thrown out of the cultipacker. It continued to move forward as the huge machine was on an incline, crushing Gilbert’s head (Stanton). At just 12 years old, Gardner …show more content…
Although there was nothing Gardner could do to prevent the unfortunate event, he still felt at fault. This lead to his struggle with his purpose, strongly correlating with Grendel. One of the most obvious themes in Grendel is, “form is function.” This theme was introduced in the very beginning on the book. In the first chapter, Grendel watches a ram climb a mountain. He says, “the old ram stands looking down over rockslides, stupidly triumphant” (Page 5). Here, Grendel finds that the ram is stupid because he follows his function. As a ram, its function is to climb. Grendel, being a hopeful monster, believes that there is more to him than eating humans and giving them heart attacks. He shows this by ridiculing the ram for not pursuing more. I think this connects to Gardner’s childhood in a way that shows how he reflected on his past self that was almost paralyzed with guilt. After Gardner killed his brother, he was the ram who didn’t pursue more than his function. Now, he is Grendel. He believes that he is capable of more now. Another portion of …show more content…
When we encounter the Dragon, we learn that he can see the entire future. This shows that he can see whether or not life has meaning. Existentialism is introduced when the Dragon says, “Dragons don’t mess with your piddling free will” (Page 63). The theory of existentialism is that you determine your own purpose. Humans serve a purpose until they die. When they die, their purpose dies as well. However, the story also tackles nihilism within a few pages. Nihilism is based on the belief that life is meaningless and has no purpose, whatsoever. The Dragon shows that he believes this when he says, “A brief pulsation in the black hole of eternity. My advice to you.. My violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it” (Page 74). Introducing both concepts within a chapter shows a struggle that the author, John Gardner, has faced. Witnessing the death of his young brother, who was only 7 years old. Someone so pure and youthful had died before he could do anything with his life. Gardner’s struggle is way more understandable once you learn about his personal life. He had to wonder whether or not life had a purpose from a young age. These are vital components to the story of Grendel and show how Gardner took his own experiences and used them to make his own variation of the famous epic,
...n very human feelings of resentment and jealousy. Grendel was an unstable and saddened figure because of his outcast status. Though Grendel had many animal attributes and a grotesque, monstrous appearance, he seemed to be guided by vaguely human emotions and impulses. He truthfully showed more of an interior life than one might expect. Exiled to the swamplands outside the boundaries of human society, Grendel’s depiction as an outcast is a symbol of the jealousy and hate that seeks to destroy others' happiness and can ultimately cripple a civilization. This take on the outcast archetype ultimately exposes the Anglo Saxon people’s weaknesses, their doubts and anxieties towards the traditional values that bounded nearly every aspect of their life.
John Gardner's revolutionary style is not encompassed by a single genre; instead, he mixes first-person narrative and several different literary styles to give the "Ruiner of Meadhalls" a unique voice. The use of first-person narrative is essential to convey Grendel's spiritual growth. Were it not for Grendel's often self-deprecatory tone, which varies from mocking - "big shaggy monster intense and earnest, bent like a priest at his prayers" (72) - to bitter and cynical - "I, Grendel, was the dark side. The terrible race that God cursed" (51) - Grendel would be impossible to relate to. Even Grendel's bouts of insanity - (whispering, whispering. Grendel has it occurred to you my dear that you are crazy?)" are easily understood.
"'Pointless accident,' not pattern, governs the world, says Grendel, who, as a consequence, adopts an existentialistic stance," explains Frank Magill in Critical Review of Short Fiction. This point has been expressed in numerous critical papers by various essayists. One may wonder, however, whether this is the only way to interpret an incredibly ambiguous story in which no question is ever clearly answered nor clearly formulated. One may wonder, actually, whether the author meant for his work to be analyzed in this way at all. The author, John Gardner, spins a tale of a monster held viscously to his destiny of an unnatural death. No matter what Grendel does, his death is predetermined. Though he tries to disprove fate to himself by believing in existentialism, the belief that actions create the future, he never validates that point of view. John Gardner's purpose in writing Grendel was to express that the future is completely unavoidable.
This ‘beast’, the protagonist of the story, fights an internal struggle, of which is a part of the Hero’s Journey. Grendel is unable to decide what to make of himself and of the world surrounding him. He has only ever known the world as wild and mechanical, yet he is charmed by the artistic brilliance of the Shaper’s words. Grendel ultimately meets a brutal yet peaceful demise. Standing on the face of the same cliff he found himself in the beginning of the novel, surrounded by mindless eyes, he states, “Poor Grendel’s had an accident. So may you all.” (Grendel, John Gardner, pg.174) Previous to this, he questions if what he is feeling is joy. The reader is lead to believe that Grendel must feel nothing but peace. This, is the concluding moment of his
Throughout John Gardner’s Grendel, the audience bears witness to a creature who has been ostracized by the world around him. Throughout his journey, the stories protagonist tries to live out his own life the way he wants to, despite being labeled as evil by those around him. Due to this constant criticism by his peers, he develops an inferiority complex that he desperately tries to make up for as the story progresses. Throughout his development, Grendel very rapidly moves past his existentialist beginning, through a brief phase of forced skepticism, and into a severely nihilistic point of view.
Authors often have to choose between concentrating on either plot or social commentary when writing their novels; in John Gardener's Grendel, the plot becomes is a secondary consideration. Grendel's exploits provide the reader with a clear understanding of the strong opinions the author carries and can be seen clearly as a narrative supporting nihilism in its many forms. The reader easily perceives the blatant religious subtext in the guise of corrupt priests and the foolish faithful. The notion of the old being wise is unacceptable to Gardener along with any notion of hero idolization. Within his novel, Gardner expresses his views concerning religion, wisdom and nature.
One of the prevalent themes John Gardner mentions in the story of Grendel is that perceptions of reality between people are different. Gardner reveals to readers throughout the novel that words, events, experiences, and beliefs forge character’s realities. In Grendel perception of reality greatly affects people’s actions, their viewpoints towards life, and decisions. For example, Grendel’s perception of reality is that the world is solely mechanical and is created with his words.
Grendel, as a character, has a much more complex identity than just a monster and a human. Some, such as Ruud, classify him as a mixture of three different characteristics, but alone, they tend to conflict with each other. By making the connection that Grendel represents immorality, the previous idea makes more sense, while simultaneously incorporating more aspects of the character into the analysis. In either case, Grendel represents much more than meets the eye, and provides a fascinating insight into
The classic struggle of good versus evil is taken from a different perspective in Grendel, a story in which John Gardner demonstrates that neither one can exist without the other.
An innocent, joyless, outcast lurks in the depths of the earth. He is feared by all due to his violent behavior and thirst for humans. Stories about this monster stretch across lands, intriguing the one and only Beowulf. In this notorious Epic, Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney, Grendel is the Frankenstein of this poem, the Joker of this time period, the Lord Voldemort of this book. Basically, Grendel is the villain and when there’s a villain there’s a hero. Our hero today is Beowulf, who challenges Grendel and he trounced not only Grendel but Grendel’s mother as well. Not only are Grendel and his mother villains but they also played the role of being the outcast/scapegoat. Symbolically they play the role
Grendel’s point of view as a narrator adds an added sense of violence to the scene, which suggests that absurdism is useless, as absurdism ultimately decay into nihilism due to the chaotic nature of life.
After having thoroughly read the book, there is no doubt that Grendel shows proof of support in existentialism. The novel follows the life of a character who is gradually "disillusioned," turning from a teary romantic into a cold nihilist. Indeed, as the main character describes his childhood/adolescence in the beginning of the novel, his naiveté and innocence clearly stand out. “And so I discovered the sunken door, and so I came up, for the first time, to moon light”, recalls Grendel, remembering his first days out on earth as he analyzed and discovered various creatures and his surroundings with blatant ignorance. With the story of his first encounter with men, after getting his foot stuck in a crac...
John Gardner’s Grendel portrays a monster searching for his purpose in life. The characters know the meaning of their lives, but Grendel tries to discover his role and what life has to offer him. Grendel discovers his identity through other characters’ actions and beliefs. In Grendel, John Gardner illustrates the contrasting views of each character to show their view of society and the influence they have on Grendel.
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
While the monsters of the poem are the antagonists of the poem, the author still manages to make the reader feel traces of sympathy for them. Grendel’s human depiction, exile and misery tugs at the heart of readers and indeed shows a genuine side to the figure, while Grendel’s mother and the dragon are sympathetic mainly because they were provoked into being attacked over things they both had a deep affection for. Their actions make us question whether they are as evil as they seem.