Grendel's Sympathy In Beowulf

Grendel’s Sympathy from First Person

John Gardener’s Grendel is another version of the epic Beowulf, except in a differing perspective. This story is retold from the viewpoint of Grendel. Gardener wants us to empathize with Grendel through his own thoughts and emotions. The way one sees the monster in Beowulf is completely different than how one would think of him in Grendel. One is forced to view someone else’s opinion versus getting to form an opinion for oneself.

In the story Grendel, one learns that this monster that seems atrocious and insensitive holds a dark outlook on the world. He often ponders the meaning of life, which seems to plague him. This stems from his painful childhood: “I understood that the world was nothing: a mechanical

chaos of casual, brute enmity [2] on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. I understood that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist.” Coming from young Grendel, this is powerful because what Grendel has been exposed to at an early age has already had a dominant effect on him. The reader does not think of the narrator as a monster when the world is presented as one. Especially when the speaker is at an innocent age.
Gardener also uses vivid imagery that describes the actual pain Grendel goes through.

A few examples are shown from when Grendel was young. “Pain flew up through me like fire up the flue of a mountain”… “Poor Grendel will hang here and starve to death," I told myself, "and no one will ever even miss him!” Where Grendel grew up, darkness is mentioned quite a few times as well as the uncertainty of his mother’s affection towards him. Therefore he has no hope for love or good things in the future.

The counterclaim that Gardener is trying to make Grendel seem more monstrous, I don’t think was formed, keeping in mind that his whole life treated him like a monster, before he became one. He once says to his mother, “The world resists me and I resist the world.” The majority of the second chapter in Grendel is Grendel in pure agony. He deals with severe physical pain as well as emotional pain, such as rejection from his mother and from society. Grendel cries out from anguish of his terrible childhood, “Ah, monstrous stupidity of childhood, unreasonable hope!”

Trauma, especially at a young age can leave emotional scars that can change you. Gardener wants readers to grow up as him, and see what could have possibly influenced a troubled

creature.
John Gardener puts us in Grendel’s shoes by first person point of view. By putting readers in this position, they can see the contrast between how the world treats Grendel and how he responds to the world. His suffering is significant because it drives him to eternal existential dread, as well as anger towards the world. By using vivid descriptions of Grendel’s pain, Gardener should make one feel deep sympathy for the monster.