Reason For Alienation In Grendel

In John Gardner’s novel, Grendel, Gardner explicitly reveals the characters search for one's self in a society in which he does not belong. From the start of the novel grendel is introduced to the feeling of loneliness, his mother’s minimal efforts to communicate with him and the constant encounters with the “indignant” creatures of nature shows grendel that he is indeed all alone. As grendel struggles to understand his purpose in life, going back and forth between reality and fantasy. Fantasy being what he wants to happen based on the shaper’s tales and reality being that he has no purpose, shapes the basic outliers as to why he does not fit into this society's standards.

Unlike the more common reasons for alienation, grendel does not face

The people’s inability to understand and see grendel beyond just the creature, created more trouble than peace. Another firm reason for their disapproval of grendel was the fact that grendel did not appear to like humans to begin with. Aside from his original thoughts that people were “dangerous creatures” grendel was not inviting to the groups of people he wanted to be accepted by. He saw their overall ability to “create their own destiny” as a threat and a quality that he himself could not obtain, almost forming a sense of jealousy. This feeling alone was another reason that mankind did not accept grendel with open arms. His fighting with the danes was another reason for their hesitance for any kind of remorse to someone like grendel. Their societal standard’s forced grendel to be vagrant and misguided as he tried to find his only purpose in life, thus showing grendel that there was no hope for a similarity between the people and