Free Will And Predestination In 'Grendel' By John Gardner

In the novel Grendel by John Gardner, the protagonist, a bear-like monster by the name of Grendel, constantly faces a battle between free will and predestination. Symbolically, the antagonist to Grendel is God, who can be seen as the quintessential image of fate. Grendel is often seen sarcastically talking to the sky, asking questions, as if he is mocking God, or whatever figure lies above the clouds trying to shape Grendel’s life beyond his own free will. While John Gardner’s Grendel portrays a main character who is determined to escape a set fate, he is constantly pushed towards the fact that predestination is an imminent and universal part of all of creation.
Early in the story, Grendel challenges the edge of a cliff saying “Dark chasms!

seize me! Seize me to your foul black bowels and crush my bones!” (Gardner 10). Shortly after, he ponders on the idea that he has total control over whether he leaps off or not, thinking nothing can cause him to enter the chasm “unless, in a lunatic fit of religion, [he] jump[s],” (10). Grendel simply believes it is he, and only he, who has control over how he will live and die. Ironically, and almost as a cruel joke, Grendel does indeed find his end off this very cliff. After being wounded in a battle with Beowulf, Grendel is dying, and wanders off from the meadhall, finding the same cliff, and deciding to jump off. While he believes this jump is an act of free will, it is indeed fate that causes the humans, God’s people, to bring him to his death, and then back to the very spot where he mocked God.
Grendel’s biggest challege in denying fate comes with his encounter with the Dragon.

Omniscient about all things past, present, and future, the Dragon attempts to educate Grendel of how the universe works, and the role of each individual part in the whole. By word of the Dragon, the future is already set as it is to be. The Dragon tells Grendel, “My knowledge of the future does not cause the future. It merely sees it, exactly as creatures at your low level recall things past,” (Gardner 63). No matter what the dragon, who is self-proclaimed to be one of the most powerful beings in existence, does or thinks, even he cannot change the future and how it is shaped. With a final sense of definity, the Dragon says to Grendel, “everything will have come and gone several times, in various forms. Even I will be gone. A certain man will absurdly kill me,” (70). This man is Beowulf, the same who will end Grendel’s life, and who will be killed in the battle with the Dragon. Beowulf is fated to die in combat, as he often proclaims in his life, and as he prepares to face the Dragon, Beowulf states “When he comes to me/ I mean to stand, not run from his shooting/ Flames, stand till fate decides/ Which of us wins,” (Beowulf 2524-7). All of these characters’ fates are intertwined so tightly, the possibility of it all being a coincidence is simply

preposterous.
Grendel’s death is his ultimate run-in with predestination.

In fact, if not for a pool of blood on the ground in the exact right spot, it is likely Grendel would have been victorious against Beowulf, killing the man who was fated to save God’s people from monsters and demons. Even unto the very moment of his death, Grendel refuses to acknowledge the fact that it is his fate that causes his destiny, merely saying, “Poor Grendel’s had an accident,” (Gardner 174). In reality, an “accident” was not the cause of Grendel’s death, for a great and powerful being such as Grendel would not die from a simply slip of the feet. All along, it has been predestined for Grendel to die, and for Beowulf to be the man who kills him. Before the fight with Grendel, at a great feast, Beowulf even tells all men and women in the hall, “Let God in His wisdom/ Extend His hand where He wills, reward\ Whom he chooses!,” (Beowulf 685-7). He thus proclaims that the outcome will be chosen by God, the ultimate form of predestination, and by extension, Grendel’s worst

nemesis.
John Gardner’s Grendel portrays one of the most basic questions of human philosophy in a very unique, yet surprisingly relatable way. Whether individuals have a choice over their actions or are predestined by some higher deity to a certain fate is a crux in human understanding, and Grendel (who is not exactly human, but mostly humanoid in physique and thought) is a prime example of this question. Grendel constantly battles predestination, mocking the sky where God must reside in deciding his fate, but in the end, it is to no avail. Gardner’s ultimate message is that fate, whether or not is ever understood or believed by an individual, will always take power over free will.