Chapter 5 Parallels And Contrasts The Dragon In Beowulf

John Gardner wrote his book with a purpose, to exploit Grendel in every way and to give readers an understanding about the way he has become. The Anglo-Saxon's didn't want their loyal

            There is a stage in everyone’s life where they feel they are not accepted by someone or something. Whether it is because of one’s age, appearance, or emotional and mental stability, a sense of disproval and isolation appears to be glaring through the eyes of society. Throughout Grendel’s life, he is shunned from humanity for he was viewed as something of destruction and harm. However, not one person ever took the time out to see Grendel’s true personality or really discover what he was all about. When facing the realities of the cruel world, Grendel found himself severely struggling with some psychological deficiencies. After performing multiple psychoanalysis tests on Grendel’s behavior, his

The story of Beowulf is a heroic epic, chronicling the distinguished deeds of the great Geatish warrior, Beowulf, who travels across the seas to rid the Danes of the evil monster Grendel, who has been inflicting destruction and terrorizing the kingdom. Beowulf is glorified for his heroic deeds of ridding the land fiendish monsters and stopping the scourge of evil, while the monster, Grendel, is portrayed as a repugnant creature who deserves death for its evil actions. However, many have disagreed with such a simplistic and biased representation of Grendel and his role in the epic poem. John Gardner in his book, Grendel, sets out to change the reader’s perception of Grendel and his role in Beowulf by narrating the story through Grendel’s point of view. John Gardner transforms Grendel, once perceived as an evil fiend in Beowulf, into a lonely but intelligent outcast who is actually quite similar to humans, due to his intelligence capacity for rational thought and his real, and at times irrational emotions. Gardner portrays Grendel as a hurt individual and as a victim of oppression, ostracized from civilization. Although the two works revolve around the same basic plot,, the themes and characters in Beowulf and Grendel are often different and sometimes contradictory.

In contrast to the Danes of “Beowulf”, Grendel searched for his very reason of existence by asking the questions “Why?” and “How?” for answers. Grendel started off in the book struggling with finding meaning in his life while watching the people clearly doing things that gave their lives meaning. He became upset as he saw that he couldn’t deter their spirits no matter what he did and started to feel jealous of their self-found purpose. He realized that through various ways the people attained meaning. In response to his confusion over their self-discovered purpose, Grendel started listening to the Shaper’s words when he spoke to the people shaping their very beliefs which confused Grendel even more on the meaning of life. After listening to the Shaper for a while, readers can see Grendel in a state of contradiction. He started off killing people as a simple, bestial monstrosity but in the end he is shown as quite intelligent and capable of choosing whether to kill or not. Soon, Grendel started seeking answers to his questions from a dragon. The dragon’s very philosophy on life was that there is no meaning of life which started to influence Grendel. Upon Grendel’s persistent questions of “Why?”, the dragon told him “You improve them, my boy! Can’t you see that yourself? You stimulate them! You make them think and scheme…You are, so to speak, the brute existent by which they learn to define themselves

John Gardner’s Grendel is the retelling of the heroic epic poem Beowulf; however, the viewpoint has shifted. Grendel is told from the viewpoint of one of Beowulf’s antagonists and the titular character of Gardner’s work—Grendel. In Grendel, Gardner humanizes Grendel by emphasizing parallels between Grendel’s life and human life. Through Gardner’s reflection of human feelings, human development, and human flaws in Grendel, this seemingly antagonistic, monstrous character becomes understood and made “human.”

Through his eyes are shown the futility of a romantic outlook and the destruction of a dream. "If the Shaper's vision of goodness and peace is a part of himself, not idle rhymes, then no one understands him at all," thinks Grendel, recognizing the divergence between reality and the heroic ideal. His defeat of Unferth marks the symbolic destruction of heroism, at least in his head; "So much for heroism," he concludes. Even Grendel's existence would seem to disprove the notions of the Shaper, who preaches the virtues of honor and courage. If the world is based on right and wrong, how can Grendel continue to survive? How can he kill senselessly every night, bring so much grief and torment to humans, and yet nothing come of it? "It's all the same in the end, matter or motion, simple or complex," whether he kills or not. In the beginning, Grendel decides that life must be devoid of meaning. Nihilism is, of curse, a rather depressing, if liberating, way to go through life, but such would seem to be the conclusion of the book.

In John Gardner’s Grendel, his theme can be interpreted in several manners. I see it as the author is trying to have the reader sympathize with Grendel. Others may think that Gardner is trying to make Grendel seem more monstrous; more evil. The author’s intentions are portrayed by explaining Grendel’s experiences prior to facing off Beowulf.

“An evil person is like a dirty window, they never let the light shine through.” Stated by William Makepeace Thackeray, this idea of “never letting the light shine through” aptly portrays Grendel’s evil and monstrous figure even though Grendel himself is not a person. Living in a world of loneliness, Grendel searches for the meaning of his own life, attempting to discover the “good” aspects that life brings instead of focusing on the evil individual he was predestined to be. Grendel manages to discover and gain knowledge about life’s various “good” qualities from his enemies, the humans. Although Grendel is exposed to these qualities by the humans, he never changes his approach to life, continuing to behave evilly like

The Dragon even “helps” Grendel by making him invulnerable to any of humans’ weapons. After their discussion, Grendel thinks about what the Dragon said regarding Grendel scaring humans for no reason. He is sitting at the edge of the forest, listening to the Shaper’s songs, which enrage him with how fictitious they are, when all of a sudden, a twig snaps behind Grendel, and a guard attacks him. Grendel tries to run, but something was in his way, so he fell. The guard tries to stab Grendel, but the sword does nothing. Soon, Grendel was surrounded by multiple guards, who were all throwing weapons at Grendel, trying to hurt him, but to no avail. Grendel picked up the guard who had first attacked him and held him upside down. Then, “as if casually, in plain sight of them all, I bit his head off, crunched through the helmet and skull with my teeth and, holding the jerking, blood-slippery body in two hands, sucked the blood that sprayed like a hot, thick geyser from his neck. It got all over me. Women fainted, men backed toward the hall. I fled with the body to the woods, heart churning- boiling like a flooded ditch- with glee” (Gardner 79). This gruesome scene is Grendel’s point of no return. He decides to become the monster that the humans think he is, thus, he murders the guard in front of everyone. This action is also directly linked to the Dragon and his influence on Grendel. The Dragon was the one who pushed Grendel to become the bad guy to the

The Dragon is undoubtedly the most influential character towards Grendel. The Dragon even physically affected Grendel during chapter 8 he put a charm on Grendel that ultimately make him invincible towards weapons (Chapter 8). Also indirectly there were other characters that helped shape what Grendel became in the end. The Shaper was a very artistic and connotative character and helped Grendel look more deeper into meanings of life and such. When Grendel becomes more experimental with the way he thinks, he starts too really have a self realization of who he should be and why he needs too think critically of his choices.

Grendel, is thus seen as the descendant of an individual who epitomizes resentment and malice in Beowulf. The author states Grendel lives in exile and is seen as “mankind’s enemy”(Raffel, 22). Grendel is the representation of all that is evil and he is declared to be the “shepherd of evil and the “guardian of crime”(Raffel, 33) by the Danes in Beowulf. The author describes Grendel to be an evil, cruel, apathetic creature who’s pleasure lies in attacking and devouring Hrothgar’s men. The author describes Grendel’s malice by painting a gruesome picture of Grendel’s countless attacks on the mead hall in which he exhibits Grendel as a heartless, greedy, and violent being who mercilessly murders the men at the mead hall by tearing them apart, cutting their body into bits and drinking the blood from their veins. The author describes Grendel’s greed by stating Grendel’s thoughts were as “quick as his greed or his claws”(Raffel, 21). He describes Grendel’s as having eyes that “gleamed in the darkness and burned with a gruesome light”, swift hard claws and great sharp teeth which paints a picture of Grendel’s frightening appearance in the reader’s mind. In contrast to the traditional story of Beowulf, Grendel in John Gardner’s novel, Grendel is not depicted as a monster but as an intelligent creature capable of human thought, feelings and speech. John Gardner portrays Grendel as an outcast

Grendel’s last words “Poor Grendel’s had an accident…. So may you all” is seen as a curse placed upon mankind and the animals who watched him die. Basically this means that grendel had faced his faith, his “accident”, so will all mankind and the animals who will have an “accident” as well. “Animals gather around me, enemies of old, to watch me die (Gardner 12).” The animals who were his first enemies and have all gathered around where he was so they would make him understand how it was like to watch their kind all die by the hand of Grendel.

The Anglo-Saxons believed that a deity controlled their fate, whereas Grendel and the Dragon knew that there was no God or higher plan for either of them; they simply exist. As the dragon states, everything is “A swirl in the stream of time. A temporary gathering of bits, a few random dust specks, so to speak…” (Gardner

Grendel makes a mockery of their idea of a hero by not even giving Unferth the satisfaction of

Though the dragon is in many ways different from Grendel, he is in some ways very much like Grendel: he too hates the Geats and humbles them (2318-19); he, too, harms the Geats and even destroys the royal hall of Beowulf (2325-26), while Grendel is not allowed to approach Hrothgar's gifstol (168-169). The dragon, like Grendel (166-167), is also a ruler of the land only during dark nights (2210-11). Both have "heathen" associations: Grendel is heathen (852, 986); the dragon, though not called "heathen" specifically by the poet, guards, however, the treasure of the heathen (2276-77, 2216).[17]