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

songs more than he liked to admit it. “A little poetic, I would readily admit. His manner of speaking was infecting me, making me pompous” (Gardner 49). Even though he truly knew that every word that was said by the Shaper was a lie, Grendel found a way to believe him. He was addicted to listening to the deceitful messages that had been told by the Shaper and his harp. Like Grendel, the monster in Frankenstein was attracted to learning the English language. He was interested in how humans used their voice to communicate with each other. He admired this method of communication and he eventually learned it himself by listening to his neighboring cottagers speak. The monster conveys that he appreciates this language when he says:
By degrees I made a discovery of still greater moment. I found that these people possessed a method of communicating their experience and feelings to one another by articulate sounds. . . This was indeed a godlike science, and I ardently desired to become acquainted with it (Shelley 130).
The monster, as well as Grendel, became fixated on literature. They both eventually learned new phrases from humans.
Since Grendel was a monster and appeared to be something that could kill anything or anyone in a heartbeat, he was seen as a threat by everything. Therefore, he lived his life being an outsider. He was misunderstood and alone causing him not to have anybody to speak to. “’Why can’t I have someone to talk to? . . . The Shaper has people to talk to. . . Hrothgar has people to talk to’” (Gardner 53). He started to realize that even though he is surrounded by many people, he was indeed alone. The monster experiences the same pain as Grendel. The monster was denied many times by humans, because of his appearance. Again, like Grendel, he was misunderstood by the rest of the world. “I am alone and miserable: man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not defy herself to me.” (Shelley 129). The monster and Grendel are isolated from society, because they were perceived as being things that have evil intentions from the start, but what the humans did not comprehend was that they were not evil-doing monsters in the beginning.
When Grendel entered the world, he did not automatically have in mind to become an enemy to the world, he was innocent and obtained pure thoughts like any other child. He explored his confined world ingeniously. In the beginning of Chapter 2, Gardner includes what Grendel did as a young one:
Explored our far-flung underground world in an endless wargame of leaps onto nothing, ingenious twists into freedom or new perplexity, quick whispered plotting with invisible friends, wild cackles when vengeance was mine. I nosed out, in my childish games, every last shark-toothed chamber and hall, every black tentacle of my mother’s cave, and so came at last, adventure by adventure (Gardner 15-16).
Grendel was naïve and guiltless.

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

same.