Loneliness That Kills: Grendel Vs. Cho

Paden Browning

Mrs. Fields

English 4/ Period 4

25 September 2014

Loneliness That Kills

In Grendel, John Gardener tells the story of the monster who is known for his act of violence against the Danes and epically fighting Beowulf. Grendel, who was exiled from communities because of the Cain Curse, wreak havoc on the Danes by eating innocent men, women, and children. Grendel’s feelings of being exiled from the community and loneliness led him to these ludicrous acts of violence. Like Grendel, modern day mass shooters are different from everyone else, are ostracized from the outside world, and have a love for violence.

Adam Lanza and Seung- Hui Cho are two mass murderers who lashed out their feelings committing a horrible crime. Adam Lanza

is the young boy who fatally shot twenty seven children and adults at his old elementary school, Sandy Hook Elementary.

One of those victims was his mother and then he late shot himself. Seung- Hui Cho was another young man who created a massacre at Virginia Tech by shooting thirty two people and then himself. These two shooters compare to Grendel in their stories of exile from their communities and the way the handle their feelings towards the people that exclude them.

Lanza and Cho were very different from everyone else, they both were mentally handicapped and were socially awkward. A doctor diagnosed Adam with “sensory- integration disorger” when he was in kindergarden(Solomon). Sensory- Integration Disorder is a disease in which the brain has trouble processing and responding to information through the five senses. Adam also had to go to speech therapy and occupational therapy at the ages five and six. Going to different therapies and different doctors at such a young age can be confusing and cause many

troubles to the child because he wants to know why he is not like the other kids. It was very obvious that there was something more then a sensory impairment with Adam, so when he was thirteen his parents took him to a psychiatrist. He was then diagnosed with Aspergers syndrome by Paul Fox, “but Adam would not accept the diagnosis” (Solomon). It is known that children with disabilities such as Aspergers “are prone to lashing out in fits of violent behavior” which would explain Adam’s outrage killing all of those children (What We Know). Cho also had many problems. Cho had a history of depression and anxiety. While Cho was in middle school at Ormond Stone Middle School, he was diagnosed with extreme social anxiety, depression and selective mutism. Selective Mutism is when a child, who is capable of speaking, will stop talking during social gatherings or in school. While Cho was in High School, he received special classes for “Emotional Disabilities and Speech and Language, including language and art therapy as well as oral presentations” (Flynn and Hietzman). It is even said that Cho was “admitted overnight to an hospital after his roommate became concerned when Cho threatened to take his own life” (Friedman).
Due to their mental handicaps, Adam and Cho were excluded from the outside world making them feeling alone and sad. It is said that “Lanza quit playing the saxophone, stopped climbing trees, avoided eye contact, and developed a stiff lumbering gait” (Solomon). Adam obviated himself from everything he used to do which made him so isolated from the world. He would have panic attacks at school and going to school which shows that being around people made him nervous and uncomfortable. Since Adam was diagnosed, he closed the world off even more than before. He became very testy by refusing therapy and would not talk to people, especially about his problems or his diagnosis. Cho’s english professor, told ABC News that Cho was “extraordinarily lonely,” said Lucinda Roy, “the loneliest person I have ever met in my life”(Potter). Cho was known to wear very dark colors showing his loneliness and darkness inside him. English Professor, Lucinda Roy, expressed her concern for her own safety when she saw him: “he wore sunglasses indoors, with a cap pulled low over his eyes” (Potter). It appeared that Cho never formed a relationship with anyone else besides his parents. Grendel was also described as very lonely and even Grendel knew that himself. Being lonely can make or break a person and in this case, it broke Grendel and Cho. The pain that Cho had not shared with any body else was because of his alienation and seclusion from everyone. He blamed the people around him, his roommates. and his piers for his loneliness as he said in the videos and diatribes he left behind. In his tapes, Cho said the people “vandalized his heart,” “raped his soul” and he said “you [snobs] never felt an ounce of [my] pain” (Flynn and Heitzman).
As well as being different and separated from everyone else, Lanza and Cho shared a penchant for violence. When it came time of Adam’s mass murder, people say he knew exactly what he was doing. He was taking all of the pain from his childhood out on his old school and people he did not even know. When Adam was in fifth grade, he and another boy wrote a book called “The Big Book of Granny” which is about a old woman who [shot] people through her cane. “In the third chapter, Granny and her son went to taxidermy a boy for their mantel piece. In another chapter, a character called Dora the Berserker says, ‘I like hurting people…. especially children”(Solomon). Adam’s mother would take him to the shooting range because she said that best way to fix Aspergers is to engage him in his fascinations. During the year his parents divorced is when Adam developed his love and fascination with killing. During Solomon’s interview with Adam’s father, he said, “he started editing Wikipedia entries on various well- known mass murders and seems to have been eerily well informed” (Solomon). Cho also used diatribes as a way to express his love for violence. While Cho was a student at Virginia Tech, he wrote at least two violent plays that both end in a death according to his English professor. In one play called “Mr. Brownstone” one character says, “I wanna watch him bleed like the way he made us kids bleed”(Potter). In the quote, all of Cho’s feelings are embedded. He wants people to feel the hurt that he feels everyday, Cho just does not know how to reach out and get help. Cho left video clips behind telling the people it was their fault that he had to shoot all these people, but with the video was a paper in which he “professed admiration for Columbine killers Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris; Cho carried out his rampage on the same week as the Columbine murders were committed in 1999” (Friedman).
Being different mentally from everyone else and being lonely can led to these acts of violence.

Lanza and Cho’s incidents could have been prevented. Secluding anyone from the outside world will hurt them more than help them and maybe the secludes themselves. In their cases, they felt that they were alone as did Grendel. We need to reach out to those people and make them feel loved so we can prevent actions like these. Lanza and Cho were two people who were different form the outside world and they knew that. All they wanted was to feel accepted but they couldn’t because they were simply just different. Lanza and Cho were both two young men who were lost in life and needed help to guid them back on the right

path.

Works Cited
Flynn, Christopher, and Dennis Heitzmann. “Tragedy at Virginia Tech: Trauma and Its Aftermath.” Choice Reviews Online. Division of Counseling and Psychology, 2008. Web. 15 Sept. 2014.
Friedman, Emily. "Va. Tech Shooter Seung-Hui Cho's Mental Health Records Released." ABC News. ABC News Network, 19 Aug. 2009. Web. 12 Sept. 2014.
Potter, Ned, David Schoetz, Richard Esposito, Pierre Thomas, and The Staff Of Abc News. "Killer's Note: 'You Caused Me to Do This'" ABC News. ABC News Network, 17 Apr. 2007. Web. 12 Sept. 2014
Solomon, Andrew. “The Reckoning.” The New Yorker. 17 March, 2014. Web. 12 Sept 2014.
"What We Know -- and Don't Know-- About Autism and Aggression." Time. Time, n.d. Web. 12 Sept. 2014.