The more common subjects in Grendel consist of alienation and lack of communication/language. These two subjects are developed enormously throughout the course of the text. Also, this two subjects come together to create an overall theme of needing language to connect with the world. Language acts as a barrier to Grendel throughout the text. Also, the complex ways to understand Grendel has a big effect on his alienation. The doe in the clearing goes stiff at the sight of my horridness, then remembers her legs and is gone (page 2). This is where Grendel’s alienation all began because he feels as if nobody understands him. That is their happiness: they see all life without observing it (page 2). He feels this way because no one takes the …show more content…
time to observe Grendel; if they were to observe him, they would know Grendel would never eat a doe. They’re buried in it like crabs in muds (page 2). Gardner uses similes such as this one throughout the text to show how the animals and humans are so into life to where they cannot see the real meaning of anything around them. Grendel’s mom never spoke (page 4). Where did Grendel learn his language he speaks now? Talking, talking, spinning a spell, pale skin of words that closes me in like a coffin (page 6). Gardner uses this simile to show how Grendel thinks his language is useless and is just another burden he has to carry on his back. She loved me, in some mysterious sense I understood without her speaking it (page 6).
The only person who ever loved Grendel that he knows of is his mother because he is her “creation”. This show alienation because nobody understands Grendel enough to love him. I found I understood them:it was my own language, but spoken in a strange way, as if the sounds were made by brittle sticks, dried spindles, flaking bits of shale (page 9). Grendel finally found someone who speaks his language, yet he has a hard time understanding some of the words they say; this is a barrier to his understanding the humans. On page 10, the first time the Danes saw Grendel was in a tree; they thought he ought to be some type of tree fungus or oak tree spirit. Maybe we could chop the fungus out ( page 10). Better not to mess with it (page 10). These are the two reactions the humans had towards Grendel’s while encountering him for the first time; this shows the alienation because the Danes are basically saying he doesn’t belong or they should leave it …show more content…
alone! On page 13, Grendel tried to be friends with the humans that’s why he didn’t attack them right away; he was looking for people to talk to. On page 14, Grendel starts spying on the Danes to better understand them. This shows the connection between lack of communication and alienation because he cannot just go up to the Danes and talk or connect with them. I was filled with a wordless, obscurely murderous unrest (page 17). Grendel doesn’t understand why the Danes are destroying the world and its resources; also, doesn’t understand why they kill each other and leave everything to waste. This alienates Grendel because he cannot connect to their wasteful ways. I too crept away, my mind aswim in ringing phrases, magnificent, golden, and all of them, incredibly, lies (page 18). Grendel stays amazed at the Shaper’s songs because they can change the whole mood and surroundings; he also gets angry because he knows it’s all lies. Words I’d picked up from men in their rages (page 22). I wasn't even sure what they meant, though I had an idea:defiance, rejection of the gods that, for my part, I’d known all along to be lifeless sticks (page 22). Grendel tries to use their words to fit in or belong to their “group” of people. All Grendel ever wants is to belong and to do that he must connect and act as if they act or say what they say! Although, he knows he is just “lifeless sticks”. On page on 22, no one truly understands the Shaper’s vision of goodness and peace; it was always a part of him. My advice is, don’t ask!
Do as I do! Seek out gold--but not my gold--and guard it (page 27). The dragon is trying to preach to Grendel that if he has something in common with the humans they can connect to each other. The dragon and the Danes have one thing in common and that would be treasure! Therefore, to have a connection with the humans Grendel just needs treasure. I can see you understand them (page 28). Dragon knows Grendel understands them, but they don’t understand Grendel, so he feels as if he doesn’t belong. The dragon uses his words of wisdom to tell Grendel how life is meaningless, so he should just do as he pleases. He uses this as an excuse to make the world a better place. Also on page 30, the dragon says everything comes and goes even himself; this is also an excuse so he doesn’t have to connect or interact with anyone. But also, as never before, I was alone (page 36). Still after Grendel raiding and killing people throughout the mead halls he didn’t have not a single friend or someone to talk to. Grendel never felt as he belonged, he was always alone. Page 37, Unferth is the first person to understand Grendel’s language. Instead of automatically fighting after this discovery Unferth tries to make a deal or offer with Grendel. Grendel brings Unferth back to Hrothgar and this show how he is trying to escape the alienation. He is trying to escape alienation because he wants to belong to a group. Unferth laughed, all alone in the silence (page 44). This is a
motif between Unferth, Grendel, and the Dragon because they was all alone and was always laughing. On page 46, Grendel is furious because he cannot relate to the young king’s sister. He wants to kill her, but she changes his mind and he hates that. This situation makes him more alienated because he knows he can never be with her. If I murdered the last of the cycling, what would I live for? I would have to move (page 77). This shows without the humans Grendel’s life would mean nothing and he would be more alone than he is now. And without Grendel the human’s wouldn’t be who they are because Grendel taught them everything they know. On pages 78 and 79, the situation between the Geats and the monster shows lack of communication because Unferth heard that the monster defeated the Geats but in reality the Geats defeated the monster. You make the world by whispers, second by second, Are you blind to that? (page 81). When the Geats told Grendel of this he felt as if he belonged in the world and maybe helped him break through his alienation. In conclusion, Grendel’s alienation grew stronger and stronger throughout the course of the text, but the end gave it a twist. In the end, Grendel felt as if he belonged because of what the Geats said to him. Also, language was a barrier to Grendel in most cases of the story except when he was talking/battling Unferth.
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
Particularly in chapter 3, Grendel listens as a blind old man, the Shaper, tells the tale of Danish history to Hrothgar. Though what is told is largely fictitious, Grendel cannot help but to feel strangely moved by the brilliance of the Shaper’s story. “Thus I fled, ridiculous hairy creature torn apart by poetry—crawling, whimpering, streaming tears, across the world like a two-headed beast, like mixed-up lamb and kid at the tail of a baffled, indifferent ewe—and I gnashed my teeth and clutched the sides of my head as if to heal the split, but I couldn’t.” (Grendel, John Gardner, pg.44) In this moment, Grendel’s mind is split between what he understands to be true and the truth that is desired. The world is callous and careless, blunt and belligerent; this he knows. However, with the artistic style and formation of the Shaper’s words, he is brought to tears and is captivated by his spiritual and emotional yearnings. Grendel is also overwhelmed with disgust and shame for himself and his vile
Before meeting the dragon, Grendel had been labeled a monster by himself and the people of Denmark. His only purpose had been to spend his days in a languid stupor only punctuated by his acts of violence to the Danes. For the Danes, Grendels’ function had been to serve as, in the dragons’ words, “the brute existence by which they define themselves”(Gardner 73). However, Grendel find this dissatisfying and yearns to find his deeper purpose. The dragon sarcastically tells Grendel that it does not matter whether he is monster or not. After all, all labels are meaningless to a nihilist. Instead the dragon encouraged Grendel to “find gold and sit on it”(Gardner 74). Basically the dragon is saying for Grendel to cease measuring himself based off mans’ false labeling and find something tangible and rational to give him purpose.
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.
It bears mentioning that Grendel was strongly influenced by the idea of nihilism, which means that he believed that nothing has meaning and everything in life was an accident. “Nevertheless, it was
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.
Grendel and the humans share a common language, but the humans’ disgust for, and fear of Grendel precludes any actual meaningful exchange.
Since the beginning Grendel is very confused with why he can’t talk or get along with people or animals. He starts off wandering through the forest when he gets caught in a tree. Grendel cries out for his mom but is disappointed to be without her arrival. He later encounters a bull that nearly kills him but instead ends up wounded. Grendel could not communicate with the animal and out of this encounter he perceives life in a nihilistic way. After waking up from his sleep humans wearing armor surround him and believed him to be a tree spirit. Grendal tried to speak to them but again he had failed to do so. Finding out he wasn’t, they became hostile but fled after hearing Grendel's mother.
"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 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
Grendel feels like an outcast in the society he lives in causing him to have a hard time finding himself in the chaotic world. He struggles because the lack of communication between he and his mother. The lack of communication puts Grendel in a state of depression. However, Grendel comes in contact with several characters with different philosophical beliefs, which allows his to see his significance in life. Their views on life influence Grendel to see the world in a meaningful way.
...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.
Grendel then began to show even more human traits than before. He became envious their happiness and starting becoming the cruel one. He started torturing and killing humans quite frequently. He starts to enjoy being cruel during his first raid. “I felt a strange, unearthly joy. It was as if I’d made some incredible discover, like my discovery long ago of the moonlit world beyond the mere. I was transformed” (79). This kind of cruelness came easily to Grendel, not unlike the humans had watched for so long. Grendel slowly becomes more and less human. He starts to lose his humanity but shows off just how human he is. Grendel becomes what he hates the most, cruel and pointless. Though Grendel enjoys the human’s suffering, it only makes him feel worse. “I feel my anger coming back, building up like invisible fire, and at last, when my soul can no longer resist, I go up - as mechanical as anything else - fists clenched against my lack of will, my belly growling, mindless as wind, for blood” (Gardner 9). Grendel falls into the trap and start to enjoy the suffering of others. While this isn’t a problem at first, Grendel eventually realizes just how pointless this is. How pointless everything is. Grendel sees that the world doesn’t do anything for anyone. He won’t be given anything and he probably won’t ever be happy. As a result, Grendel learns to live with this hatred and continues
Grendel is alone; he can not know God’s love and be comforted. He is an outcast, and the sins of his forefather have fallen upon him. Evil can not stand God being glorified just as the praising of God by the Danes angered Grendel.
Grendel exhibits human feelings and characteristics in many ways. Although Grendel is a monster “forced into isolation by his bestial appearance and limited imagination” (Butts) he yearns to be a part of society; he craves companionship while he is isolated. With his “ear pressed tight against the timbers [of Hart]” (43), he watches and listens to the humans and what goes on in Hart, the meadhall of King Hrothgar, to feel like he is a part of civilization. He also has feelings in relation to specific humans. Just like the citizens of Denmark, he is extremely affected by the Shaper and his songs that are “aswim in ringing phrases, magnificent, golden, all of them, incredibly, lies” (43). Grendel is profoundly “moved by the power of the Shaper’s poetry” (Butts). Queen Wealtheow shows Grendel the feminine, sweet, and kind side of life. “She had secret wells of joy that overflowed to them all” and her peaceful effect on those around her is a main cause of Grendel’s almost obsessive fascination with her and in turn, drives Grendel to feelings of rage. Grendel’s humanlike feelings show that his personality is similar to that of a human, helping those who read his story to relate to him.