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1. Grendel is isolated from humanity because he is viewed as “the Other.” In fact, Grendel’s human counterpart is likely Hrothgar, though Hrothgar is unaware of this relationship.

• As the Other, what role does Grendel serve in the life of Hrothgar? ( topic sentence )
• Discuss the role Grendel plays in the rise of Hrothgar’s kingdom.
• In your closing sentences, discuss Grendel’s pity for the aging Hrothgar.

2. Grendel feels a particular affection for the Shaper.

• How do Grendel’s feelings toward the Shaper alter over the course of the novel, and why? ( topic sentence )
• In what ways does the role the Shaper plays in Grendel’s life mirror or contrast with the role the Shaper plays in the lives of the Danes?

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Grendel themes, a cyclical view of life.

Grendel is a cyclical novel. It takes place in twelve chapters, respectively representing the twelve months of the year or the twelve signs of the zodiac. Seasons pass in the novel, and return the same time the following year. Even at the outset, Grendel notices that his “twelve year war” against Hrothgar is the same this year as it was the last. The imagery of the novel is likewise cyclical: the ram at the beginning of the novel appears again at the end. Finally, Grendel’s own quest for identity runs full circle as he begins the novel thinking himself the sole denizen of a self-created universe, and ends the novel forced to create the very reality (a wall) that does him harm.

The Importance of Art

Art plays a major role in Grendel. The Shaper 's art creates a false history for Hrothgar, but leads to the very real creation of Hrothgar's city-state and the founding of the mead hall Herot. The priests carve their own gods from wood and stone, offering a religion to the Scyldings that they themselves do not believe. However, these same graven images allow Grendel to pose as one of their gods and inspire the old priest Ork into true devotion and a renewed commitment to monotheism. Ultimately, art trumps philosophy when the stranger (Beowulf) forces Grendel to create a poem that will bring the monster’s virtual wall into reality.

The Conflict between Traditional Heroic Ideals and Existentialist Philosophy

Unferth represents the heroic ideals of the Scyldings (and humanity in general). He believes in a higher good and the triumph of honor over evil and treachery. His ideals are tested by Grendel, whom he cannot harm and who refuses to attack the warrior in turn. Unferth is driven to the brink of suicide by Grendel's rejection of the heroic ideals and the monster's assertion of his own meaning for reality: Grendel takes Unferth's unconscious body back to Herot unharmed, leaving the Scyldings to make their own meaning in this action.

Grendel is a novel driven by the main character's sense of isolation. Grendel cannot relate to his mother, whom he considers little more than a brute beast, nor can he make himself understood by the humans he encounters, even though he understands their speech. Grendel is a perpetual outsider, looking for a place to belong. His high-handed search for philosophical meaning is ultimately one more attempt to know who he is and where he belongs.

Hrothgar, too, is isolated by his own power. He marries a woman too young for him and finds a potential threat among his own household. While his warriors sing and drink, Hrothgar broods. His own quest for identity has led him to a place as lonely as Grendel's forced exile from humanity.

Self-knowledge and Self-deception

Grendel's quest is to know who and what he is. His ever-changing answer to these questions suggests that he will never be satisfied with an end to his quest. Even when he is told his position in the cosmos by beings far wiser than he is (such as the dragon), Grendel attempts to alter this position in favor of something different. Ironically, his very attempts to reject his ordained place in the universe lead him to fulfill the role of Hrothgar's (and humanity's) helpful nemesis more completely than he desires.

Nature vs. Nurture

What makes Grendel a monster? The novel suggests that Grendel partakes of the nature of his brutish and grotesque mother through the accident of birth. However, Grendel has a keen mind and is capable of making his own choices; it is only when the bull, and later Hrothgar and the other warriors, take advantage of his immobility that Grendel is forced to retaliate with violence. Does Grendel kill because that is what he was born to do, or because his abusers have taught him the ways of violence? The novel intertwines this psychological question with the greater philosophical themes of identity, the nature of existence, and the lack of confirmation of reality.

Fate vs. Free Will

The dragon denies that there is such a thing as destiny, yet at the same time states that it knows Grendel's role in the universe. The dragon circumvents this seeming contradiction by claiming to see past, present, and future simultaneously: knowledge is not cause, nor is it evidence of some higher purpose. Grendel attempts to thwart the dragon's prophesied role for himself, but only ends up doing exactly what the dragon said he would. This would seem to place the novel firmly in the "fate" camp.

However, when Grendel attacks the Scyldings and targets Wealtheow , he chooses not to kill her. He claims that to kill her would be his "ultimate act of nihilism," a self-destructive decision that would at least end Grendel's boredom, but he refuses to end the tedious cycle, leaving the reader to ponder whether Grendel freely chose to spare the queen, or if he cannot help but perpetuate the cycle of violence and despair.

Grendel Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Grendel is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

How was Grendel's mother and his relationship?

In Chapter Two, Grendel reflects on his childhood. He used to play games in the subterranean home he shared with his mother. He would attack and hide from shadows as he explored the myriad caves. He discovers the pool of the fire snakes, which he...

How does this selection portray Grendel's personality and motives ?

I'm sorry, you haven't provided the selection in question.

Why is Grendel so angry and homicidal?

Grendel's first encounters with the world outside are both marvelous and disheartening, particularly as his first moment of weakness leads to an attack by a bull, followed by torment at the hands of the first humans with which Grendel interacts....

Study Guide for Grendel

Grendel study guide contains a biography of John Gardner, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Grendel
• Grendel Summary
• Character List

Essays for Grendel

Grendel essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Grendel.

• Existential Philosophy in John Gardner's Grendel
• Pain of Isolation
• Grendel's Darkness
• Astrological Signs as Symbols in Grendel
• The Consequences of Grendel's Solipsism

Lesson Plan for Grendel

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Grendel
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Grendel Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for Grendel

• Introduction

John Gardner

Everything you need for every book you read..

Monsters and Humans

The most striking thing about Grendel is that the novel is narrated by a monster. Gardner takes the oldest story in English literature of a hero defeating a monster ( Beowulf ) and turns it on its head by seeing the tale through the eyes of the monster Grendel . The novel thus continually asks what it means to be a monster and how monsters and humans differ or are related. When Grendel and the…

Grendel explores the power, consequences, seductions, and deceptions of various forms of language. Language is what separates Grendel from nature and from his mother . His ability to speak marks him as different from the rest of the natural world that cannot respond to him. The very language that enables Grendel to tell his own story actually isolates him within what Grendel calls a “pale skin of words that closes me in like a coffin.”…

Loneliness and Isolation

For much, if not all, of the novel, Grendel is simply looking for someone to talk to. His mother cannot communicate with him, and the various animals he addresses cannot respond. Utterly alone and isolated, he can talk only to himself. When he finally encounters humans, he tries to communicate with them, but they misunderstand him and brand him as a terrifying monster. The closest thing Grendel has to a friend or companion is perhaps…

Nature and Time

Throughout the novel, Grendel and other characters attempt to answer large questions concerning nature and time. Grendel speaks to nature and at times wonders if there is some kind of spirit in nature (as the Danes believe), but ultimately concludes that the world is made up of a series of mindless, mechanical processes. But then where do Grendel and the Danes fit into this understanding of nature? Is Grendel also simply carrying out a natural…

In the background of the novel is perhaps English literature’s most significant text about heroism: Beowulf . Whereas the epic poem Beowulf builds up the idea of a hero, much of Grendel criticizes and pokes fun at the very idea of heroism. From Grendel’s perspective, the heroic feats celebrated by the Shaper are all lies. The Danes’ exploits are simply examples of “violence no more legitimate than a wolf’s.” Hrothgar’s amassing of riches and tribute…

Philosophy, Theory, and Belief

Grendel can be seen as a novel of competing ideas. Different characters try to make sense of the world in different ways, and as Grendel progresses through the novel, he must choose which set of theories or beliefs he adheres to. On one end of the spectrum, Grendel’s mother experiences the world in purely physical, sensual way, and does not question or theorize at all. Grendel rejects this simplistic approach to the world early in…

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Essay Samples on Grendel

Existentialism and nihilism in john gardner’s "grendel".

When John Gardner’s Grendel appeared in 1971, it was instantly and widely welcomed by many reviewers, critics, and readers. Like James Joyce’s Ulysses before it, the late Gardner’s Grendel derives plenty of its substances, wit, and ingenuity from reference to the antiquated epic that inspires...

• Existentialism

Use Of Philosophical And Astrological Motifs In Grendel By John Gardner

Thomas Carlyle states, Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man. Isolation hurts people deeply and causes them to feel useless and lost. Neglect can cause serious psychological damage to an individuals sense of compassion, their ability to be kind, and how they...

• Philosophical Theory

The Journey Of Man Through Philosophy In Grendel

The novel Grendel by John Gardner explores the concepts of Orphism, Nihilism, and Empiricism to express how a human mind develops over the course of a lifetime. Grendel mirrors this process as he discovers these various philosophies that define his life. The first chapter of...

Character Depiction Differences of Grendel

The story Grendel is a retelling of the first monster in the English poem Beowulf. Grendel was written by the author John Gardner in 1971. This story is in the point of view of the monster Grendel. Grendel tells the story of Grendel and his...

• Literature Review

The Theme of Heroism in John Gardner's Grendel and Burton Raffel's Beowulf

A hero can be defined in many ways; the hero’s can see themselves as a hero and society can see them as more of a villain, or society can see them as a hero but in their eyes they are as evil as it comes....

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Philosophial Elements in John Gardner's Novel Grendel

Thomas Carlyle states, “Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.” Isolation hurts people deeply and causes them to feel useless and lost. Neglect can cause serious psychological damage to an individual’s sense of compassion, their ability to be kind, and how they...

• Philosophy of Life

Compare and Contrast: Beowulf and Grendel

People think of evil and danger when thinking of Grendel. Grendel is one of the enemy’s Beowulf has to destroy. But in the novel Grendel he is shown more advanced his personality is shown while the killing sprees happen. Grendel is shown to have a...

Best topics on Grendel

1. Existentialism And Nihilism In John Gardner’s “Grendel”

2. Use Of Philosophical And Astrological Motifs In Grendel By John Gardner

3. The Journey Of Man Through Philosophy In Grendel

4. Character Depiction Differences of Grendel

5. The Theme of Heroism in John Gardner’s Grendel and Burton Raffel’s Beowulf

6. Philosophial Elements in John Gardner’s Novel Grendel

7. Compare and Contrast: Beowulf and Grendel

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Grendel at 50: How John Gardner’s Finest Novel Undermines His Ideas About Moral Fiction

“ grendel is funny, entertaining, troubling, and above all unruly; the novel refuses to behave.”.

Not long ago, an acquaintance on Twitter asked for recommendations of lesser-read classics, which he defined as “anything published fifty years ago or more.” Unable to resist any occasion for a book recommendation, I began ticking through titles in my head and came, eventually, to John Gardner’s Grendel , a perennial favorite of mine. Scurrying to Google to look up the year of publication, I found that the novel was published in 1971—50 years ago.

I’d been the one to think of the novel in connection with the prompt, but I was still surprised to find that Grendel had reached the threshold to qualify as someone’s definition of an “old” book—almost as much as the book itself surprised me when I first read it years ago. A few of my professors had recommended the novel to me when I was an undergraduate, but I resisted, thinking the book too musty, too stodgy, too… well, classic , precisely the category the book now apparently qualifies for .

A reworking of the Beowulf myth from the monster’s perspective? Snore. Even the cover seemed to conspire in making me think the book was dull: that drab illustration in shades of brown and tan evoking the yellowed pages of a historical archive, and a fluffy monster looking a little like a Muppet, his head thrown back to unleash a howl at the sky. It was only years later when a trusted friend insisted over and over again that I read Grendel , practically thrusting the novel into my hands, that I gave in and discovered in its pages a work that felt newer, fresher, and far more dangerous than what I’d expected. That feeling has sustained itself through multiple readings over the years. No matter how many times I come back to it, Grendel still retains its ability to surprise.

The simple plot of the novel closely tracks that of Beowulf, its source material. Hrothgar, an ancient warlord-king, builds a mighty palace and mead-hall called Heorot to stand as a tribute to his greatness. But his peace is troubled by the embittered monster Grendel, who comes nightly to pick off Hrothgar’s thanes and drag them back to his lair to eat their bones. The warrior Beowulf shows up and, after engaging in some mead-fueled boasting, engages in battle with Grendel, ultimately killing him by ripping his arm off at the socket. Beowulf later fights Grendel’s mother and a dragon, too—though neither battle appears in Grendel , both monsters are featured.

Gardner’s trick in Grendel is not merely to turn these events inside out and give them a straight retelling from the monster’s perspective, but to give the story a fresh philosophical gloss, bringing a decidedly postmodern outlook to this pre-modern story. In Gardner’s hands, Grendel is not merely a monster but a sort of existentialist antihero, meaning-obsessed, struggling to grasp the significance of his existence, his consciousness, and the brute reality, the inescapable thing-ness, of the world he perceives around him.

From afar, Grendel spies on humans—“thinking creatures,” he calls them, “pattern makers, the most dangerous things I’d ever met.” Grendel witnesses them making early stumbles toward culture, but the thing these humans like to cultivate most is war: they meet in fields, shout boasts, then fall on each other and fight until the ground runs with blood, their battles foolish and futile.

Things change when a blind traveling bard who Grendel calls “the Shaper” comes to Hrothgar’s hall to sing a tale of the king’s exploits in battle, turning the brute reality of the humans’ fighting into art. The effect of the Shaper’s song is transformative; the hills, Grendel says, are hushed, “as if brought low by language… Men wept like children; children sat stunned.” Even Grendel, who knows the truth, is moved: “I too crept away, my mind aswim in ringing phrases, magnificent, golden, and all of them, incredibly, lies.” Grendel’s ambivalence turns to murderous anger when the Shaper’s song casts him as a villain, an antagonist to Hrothgar’s kingdom of courage and virtue.

So begins the monster’s war on this pre-modern human society. Grendel’s campaign against Hrothgar and his thanes is a contradictory one: he fights at once against the falsely constructed meaning of the Shaper’s art, and out of a paradoxical belief in that very same constructed meaning—in resentment that he has been cast as an outsider to it, an enemy to the human community. Grendel remains a nihilist, believing firmly that reality is a brute physical fact with no underlying significance, humans dangerous beasts whose battles signify nothing more than a childish fight for dominance. Any art that would suggest otherwise is a lie.

Yet Grendel is also, simultaneously, deeply credulous, sentimental, even a sort of hopeless romantic when it comes to the Shaper’s artistic propaganda. He can’t help but be moved by it, even as he yearns to unmask it. Had the Shaper’s song put Grendel in league with the humans, he might blithely accept their false values, their constructed virtues. But since the Shaper’s song casts Grendel as an outsider to the human community, he makes war on them, and on the meaning their art creates.

That this artistic approach to the material actually works—that casting a monster of myth as a nihilist antihero agonizing over the meaning of existence and art comes off as anything more than a pretentious academic game—is a minor miracle of style. In Gardner’s hands, all this philosophizing comes off as completely naturalistic, making perfect sense in the context of Grendel’s psychology and his world. Of course , one thinks, reading it, of course the dragon should be an all-seeing creature engaging in Cartesian philosophical discourse, of course Grendel himself should be a deconstructionist engaging in Lacanian wordplay (“I am lack: alack!”) and tearing apart the Anglo-Saxon literary tradition at its root.

Even more surprising, though, is who wrote the novel, relative to its contents and the conceptual tricks it deploys. John Gardner, in addition to being the author of Grendel , was a critic who, in his controversial work of criticism On Moral Fiction (1978), took the position of a traditionalist arguing against the meaning and language games of his postmodern contemporaries. He disapproved of metafiction and was stolidly anti-nihilist, arguing that the purpose of fiction was to inspire its audience toward morality. Yet his most enduring work of fiction… is a sly little metafiction full of postmodern language play. What gives?

A central image Gardner uses in On Moral Fiction provides a possible explanation. In the opening of the book, Gardner offers a “governing metaphor” for his project through a story from Norse myth about Thor “beating back the enemies of order.” By the end of the fable, Thor has been bested, the agents of chaos triumphant; Gardner’s goal in the critical work, he says, is to take up Thor’s hammer, and fight for the kind of narrative art that “beats back the monsters” again. Gardner’s use of heroes and monsters of myth as metaphors in this context is striking, suggesting that he might have intended Grendel as a critique of postmodernism by casting the monster as a miserable nihilist playing games with language and meaning, until he’s overcome by the moral power of the Shaper’s art, and ultimately killed by Beowulf, the order-restoring artist-hero. ( Grendel , it should be pointed out, predated On Moral Fiction by seven years.)

If this was Gardner’s intent, however, then it’s clear that the material got away from him and became something that he didn’t quite intend. Grendel is simply too good a character, his perspective too charismatic and persuasive, to serve as a critique of postmodernism; if anything, Gardner ended up creating a vibrant space for the very perspectives and artistic approaches he claimed to be against.

Next to Grendel , On Moral Fiction is worse than unpersuasive—it’s deadly dull, closed-down and dreary where Grendel is open, alive, vibrating with antic energy. Grendel is funny, entertaining, troubling, and above all unruly ; the novel refuses to behave. As a result, the viewpoints Grendel espouses end up being far more convincing than Gardner perhaps intended them to be. Gardner, in On Moral Fiction , may believe a classic work like Beowulf to be an example of true moral art—of the epic poem, he says approvingly that its “moral causality is inexorable.” But the falseness Grendel detects in the epic poem is real, and impossible to ignore. We have seen, through Grendel’s eyes, the baseness of the warring human tribes; we have heard, through his ears, the emptiness of the virtues the Shaper creates in his propagandistic reworkings of the ugly, violent history.

And Beowulf, the supposed hero of the tale? In Gardner’s hands, he is hardly an order-bringing moralist, but a nihilist alongside Grendel—albeit a cheerful one. In the midst of their climactic battle, Beowulf gets Grendel in an iron grip and whispers in his ear: “ Grendel, Grendel! You make the world by whispers, second by second. Are you blind to that? Whether you make it a grave or a garden of roses is not the point.” Pushing Grendel against a wall, the warrior demands, “ Feel the wall: is it not hard?… Observe the hardness write it down in careful runes. Now sing of walls! Sing!”

This is not quite the nihilism of Grendel and the dragon, but it’s not the essentialist moralism of Gardner’s critical work either. Instead it’s something that lands somewhere between, far more daring and terrifying than either extreme: art, rather than reflecting the world, actually makes it. Stories create their own realities. They create graves, gardens—even walls. We make the world by language, by stories. And the worlds we make are both within our control and beyond it, just as stories themselves leap beyond our abilities as writers, readers, and critics to tame or contain them.

This is what I like to believe Gardner discovered in writing Grendel , and the reason the book feels so at odds with its creator’s stated opinions, his dearly held beliefs: that in making stories, we bump up against something beyond ourselves, something outside our control, something that, if we’re lucky, leaps beyond what limits us and lives outside our precious little categories. Maybe “morality” was the name Gardner tried to give to this indefinable thing, but in doing so he made it smaller, I think. Grendel lives beyond the opinions of its creator, and that is because it is in contact with something alive, something that resists naming, and taming.

Gardner’s later critical work—which turned away from pure criticism to a consideration of writing craft—lends some credence to the idea that something in the writing of Grendel surprised Gardner, upending his tidy theories about the way life and art should work. In The Art of Fiction (1983), Gardner is more ambivalent about the traditionalist view of great literature; he acknowledges that many of the old stories, including Beowulf , are “authoritarian” in their purpose, and ripe for deconstruction.

Gone is the search for immutable truths in art, replaced by a striking humility, a growing sense that what truly lives on the page and in the hearts and minds of a reading public is beyond the control of the artist or critic: “What we enjoy we enjoy; dispute is useless. And one of the things human beings enjoy most is discovery.” A passage in which Gardner disinterestedly considers a writer “retelling the story of Beowulf from the perspective of the monster Grendel” as though he had not himself written just such a book is odd indeed—to get a confession of Gardner’s own sense of discovery in Grendel , one must turn to his other book on the craft of writing, On Becoming a Novelist (1983) . There, Gardner speaks of moments in which writers encounter something in their stories he can only call “strangeness.” He admits that he cannot fully put the experience to words: “The mystery is that even when one has experienced these moments, one finds, as mystics so often do, that after one has come out of them, one cannot say, or even clearly remember, what happened.” But he says very clearly that he experienced just such a moment when he was writing—out of all the works of fiction he’d published to that point, all the texts he could have named— Grendel.

It’s perhaps especially fitting that the scene he reports as the one whose writing brings him into contact with strangeness is the novel’s final chapter, the scene of Grendel’s death, in which the monster was, according to Gardner’s own analysis, “hanging on for dear life to his convictions, in terror of being swallowed by the universe and convinced that his opinions and his identity are one and the same.” I take this as a kind of confession on Gardner’s part—a confession that Grendel’s struggle was his own, and that the experience of having his own opinions swept away by the power and strangeness of art felt like a kind of death.

“ Is it joy I feel ?” Grendel wonders as he flees into the woods, less an arm, to die. Perhaps it’s also the novelist speaking there, not quite understanding what he’d created, not knowing (how could he?) that it would be his most enduring work. And then, both wishing and not wishing the experience on his fellow writers, authors present and future, penning the monster’s last words: “Poor Grendel’s had an accident. So may you all .”

Andrew DeYoung

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Beowulf — Beowulf And Grendel Comparison

Beowulf and Grendel Comparison

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• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free