The Meaningless Life of Grendel in John Gardner's novel, Grendel
"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive...." Joseph Campbell made this comment on the search for meaning common to every man's life. His statement implies that what we seem bent on finding is that higher spark for which we would all be willing to live or die; we look for some key equation through which we might tie all of the experiences of our life and feel the satisfaction of action toward a goal, rather than the emptiness which sometimes consumes the activities of our existence. He states, however, that we will never find some great pure meaning behind everything, because there is none. What there is to be found, however, is the life itself. We seek to find meaning so that emptiness will not pervade our every thought, our every deed, with the coldness of reality as the unemotional eye chooses to see it. Without color, without joy, without future, reality untouched by hope is an icy thing to view; we have no desire to see it that way. We forget, however, that the higher meaning might be found in existence itself. The joy of life and the experience of living are what make up true meaning, as the swirl of atoms guided by chaotic chance in which we find our existence has no meaning outside itself.
In John Gardner's novel, Grendel, the protagonist himself, Grendel the monster, loses sight of that joy in life when he forgets that it is the life itself for which he is living, not some outside force which governs his actions. In this slip, he dooms himself to a living death of machine-like actions culminating in his physical de...
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...life. In not seeking the connection between heart, mind, and soul, Grendel lives a disjointed life, fulfilling the prophecy of the dragon; all is meaningless, because it is meaningless to and through him. "Nihil ex nihilo, I always say."
Works Cited and Consulted:
Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth, New York: Doubleday, 1988.
Butts, Leonard. "The Monster as Artist: Grendel and Freddy's Book." The Novels of John Gardner. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1988. 86-110.
Gardner, John. Grendel. New York: Vintage Books, Random House Publishers 1989.
Klinkowitz, Jerome. "John Gardner's Grendel." John Gardner: Critical Perspectives. Ed. Robert A. Morace and Kathryn Van Spackeren. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1982. 62-67.
Merrill, Robert. "John Gardner's Grendel and the Interpretation of Modern Fables." American Literature 56.2 (1984): 162-180.
Philosophies such as nihilism, existentialism, and solipsism are explored throughout Grendel, a novel by John Gardner. Throughout the book, Grendel embarks on a journey of self-discovery, in which he tries to find himself through philosophy. Despite trying many different philosophies, Grendel is only met with dissatisfaction. However, the nihilistic philosophy that is introduced by the enigmatic dragon seemingly provides Grendel with a way out of his banal existence. Despite this, Grendel couldn’t fully commit to nihilistic beliefs therefore leading to the development of his scepticism philosophy. In the end, Grendel meets his death at Beowulfs’ hands, who disproves his scepticism and forces him to die an existentialist. The fact is that if Grendel had decided to
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The living lost all sense of morality and justice, and a new attitude toward the church emerged. Medieval people could find no Divine reason for the four-year nightmare, and dissatisfaction with the church gave impetus to reform movements that eventually broke apart the unity of the Catholic Church.
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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
Grendel comes to this idea when he has his first existential crisis in the scene where a bull continuously tries to attack him in the same fashion over and over again. This is when Grendel comes to the realization that only he exists. He says, “I understood that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist. All the rest, I saw, is merely what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly-as blindly as all that is not me pushes back” (22). Grendel is referring to the mechanical and instinctual way that the bull attacks, it is the same way the bull would attack against any threat, be it an earthquake or a bird. Grendel feels that he is the only truly sentient being in the whole world at this point, making him feel isolated, and in a way superior to every other being in the forest. He believes that he is the creator of the whole world, everything and every being in the world is simply driven by “...casual, brute enmity…” (22), and only he is the aberration to this state of mindlessness. This existential crisis sets the stage for Grendel’s later musings about life and meaning by setting up his feelings of isolation from others and his loneliness because of this
Written sometime between 400-700 AD, Beowulf, the basis for the novel Grendel, was rooted in historical fact. When Gardner decided to write Grendel over 1200 years later, he kept some of these themes, twisted some, and omitted others. There are many characteristics of Anglo-Saxon culture exhibited by Gardner in Grendel, however due to the nihilistic view Grendel holds, they are sometimes warped.
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.
The monster Grendel is the ironic eye through which the action is viewed and from this perspective he provides the reader with never-ending examples of buffoonery and self-parody. Often his claims reveal the Sartrean component in his makeup: "I create the whole universe, blink by blink"(Gardner 22). Gardner,of course,wants to make a point here about solipsism. There is more to the objective world than Grendel's ego. Naturally the universe still exists when Grendel closes his eyes. Likewise, when Grendel says "I observe myself observing what I observe", (Gardner 29) ,he reminds us of Sartre's view of the self-reflective nature of consciousness. As he said in his interview, Gardner planned to parody Sartre's ideas in Being and Nothingess in these sections of the novel.
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,
Archetypes refer to the persistently recurring symbols or motifs in literature. The term itself has its origins in ancient Greek and continues to play a prominent role in analyzing literature. Archetypal images and story patterns encourage readers to participate ritualistically in basic beliefs, fears, and anxieties of their age. These archetypal features not only constitute the eloquence of the text but also tap into a level of desires and concerns of civilization. The Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney, integrates many of the common archetypes that still exist today. The outcast archetype is one that particularly expressed the desires, anxieties and values of the people who lived during the Beowulf era. Grendel, a character of monstrous appearance and hazily human emotion, is portrayed as the principal outsider in Beowulf. The incorporation of a banished character against his fellow society effectively expressed the anxiety and fears that the Anglo-Saxon culture felt towards seclusion and abnormality, caused by a societal absorption in family lineage and traditionalism.