Loss Of Innocence In Grendel By John Gardner

In Grendel by John Gardner, the protagonist Grendel is portrayed as innocent, due to his lack of communication with everyone including his mother. This causes him to believe that he is alone in the universe and that he is a God which is when he begins to lose his mind and innocence.

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.

All of this leads him to think he is alone and no one will ever understand him.

He is damaged psychologically and is basically put on exile by his own nature. As more humans appear to colonize within the area, Grendel meets a blind poet he calls “ the shaper” who tells the story of a man named Scyld Shefing, however being a myth Grendel is confused becomes hysterical and flees. When Grendel gets back to his cave he attempts to speak to his mother again and fails. This leads him to feel even more lonely and falls through the sea where he meets a dragon with a different philosophical view of fatalism. He shares with Grendel this view and Grendel again becomes hysterical. So it seems that when someone eventually does communicate with Grendel he is even more confused. Especially when someone has a different ideology, Grendel enters into a state of denial and

flees.
Now Grendel becomes torn apart by the idea of meaninglessness and actual purpose and predestination. This is when he chooses to believe that he is meant to play the villain because it's what drives the people to be good. After realizing his fate he eventually does become evil. He is convinced by his own nature that he is a monster and because people don’t care or at least don’t seem to through the eyes of Grendel.
When he goes to attack and eat the Geats, Grendel is overpowered by Beowulf and while he is being beat by Beowulf. His imagination wonders and his own reality is distorted, like someone on acid he hallucinates things and is beaten with his own arm. Grendel eventually flees but because his serious injury he dies. Grendel is left with the conversation he and dragon had which made him feel what appeared to be joy. As if he knew at long last everything he needed to know and was content and quietly drifts away from his own miserable consciousness into a state of bliss and nothingness.
Of course people had reason to be scared of someone like Grendel. He was an alien in their eyes but this all brings the reader to feel for Grendel and to have more empathy than those around him. This brings the reader to realize how frigiel people can be and the steps they can take towards understanding and helping one another.