The Destruction Of Fear In Gardner's Grendel, By John Gardner

When people think of monsters, the first thing that pops into their head is Frankenstein, zombies, creatures of the night. Monsters are scary. Monsters in society reveal peoples fears and anxieties, their preconceived notions of normality, and represent the unknown.

However, in John Gardner's book, we are given knowledge about Grendel, exposed to his existentialism, and provided many different examples of theories that the Anglo-Saxon's would violently shriek upon hearing. Yet he still portrays him as a monster? One philosophy we are exposed to in Grendel is Plato's "Allegory of the Cave". In this philosophic viewpoint, a man is chained to the ground all of his life facing nothing but a cave wall. The only things he will ever see are the shadows of the objects people walk by the fire with. If a vase were to be held, how would he know what it was besides knowing what the shadow looked like? If he were let out into the real world he wouldn't recognize anything because he would be ignorant to everything but shadows. In Gardner's book, Grendel himself was kept in a cave representing ignorance for most of his childhood. When he finally came out he did nothing but terrorize and eat the people. Is ignorance really such a bad thing under certain circumstances?

John Gardner’s Grendel and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein both include characters who are labeled as monsters. Grendel and the Monster share common characteristics such as being ugly, strong, large, and they kill others. They are both insecure about their appearance and how society portrays them. Grendel and the Monster use violence to try and cope with their insecurities. In the literary works Grendel and Frankenstein, both the monster’s physical appearance and their interactions with others cause them to become an outcast from society. This leads to rejection of themselves, low self-esteem, and ultimately they create havoc within their communities.

In the novel, Grendel by John Gardener, Grendel is a human-like creature capable of rational thought as well as feeling emotions. Early on in the story Gardener depicts Grendel as being very observant, critical and somewhat spiteful of the world around him. He describes himself as a murderous monster who smells of death and crouches in the shadows. Grendel watches the humans from the shadows of the trees and at first it seems as though they are the real monsters, slaughtering and pillaging all for the sake of their leaders and for power. This light that the humans are put in gives Grendel a certain charisma about him, making him seem like the one to side with in this novel. Later in the story, however, things change. Grendel seeks out the

Grendel exhibits human feelings and characteristics in many ways. Although Grendel is a monster “forced into isolation by his bestial appearance and limited imagination” (Butts) he yearns to be a part of society; he craves

Asma states, "Monsters can stand as symbols of human vulnerability and crisis, and as such they play imaginative foils for thinking about our own responses to menace.” This means that human weaknesses and fears are represented through monstrous figures, and these fictional situations provide perspective into how we react in fearful environments. In our current society we fear many things, including but not limited to failed or corrupt governmental systems, the afterlife, the unknown, and captivity, which makes this claim valid. Although we may not realize it, these fears are embodied by the horror monsters we see in popular culture. Society shares common fears, and often times the most prevailing fear is reflected in the most popular characters at any given time. Monsters are the fictional representations of society’s dark subconscious, exploring not only why the author’s statement is accurate but what we actually fear.

Grendel in a situation where he is feeling different emotions that make him act a certain way. Every time Grendel terrorizes human beings, it seems vile and full of hate, but that is not the intention. People fail to acknowledge why the relationship between Grendel and humans is full of hate. The awful relationship started off when they started off with a negative impression due to the lack of communication. Grendel became scared of the humans and the only thing the humans can do is defend themselves when they see an enormous monster. While Grendel knows of his evil deeds he is still confused about what his true identity is. This failure to figure out his identity is what Grendel seems to try and achieve throughout the novel. It is not easy for him because of the position he has in life. Grendel does not truly know his place in the world and he strives throughout his life to find the answer.

When looking at monsters, most everyone immediately assumes that it is that of something evil. But, looking into the novel, we see how what most people would judge as a “monster”; how he thinks and feels. Reading and thinking deeper, it truly shows that all assumptions are put to questioning. In the novel “Grendel” , written John Gardner, We really start to look into the personal thoughts of what most of us would consider a monster. It shows the constant battle of thoughts and feeling going on in his head and hows those thought ties to how he observes the “wasteful, greedy, and brutal creatures” of which we would know as mankind. In looking at the bigger picture, Grendel is more human like than monster because of how he thinks, sees,

Although Grendel shows some signs of nobility, Beowulf proved to be quite the character, reflecting The Nine Noble Virtues such as courage, industriousness, and self-reliance. Grendel is said to be misunderstood, that he’s thoughtless and bloodthirsty, but as shown in John Gardner's Grendel, he reflects with reasonable morals and a little bit of nobility. Beowulf on the other hand is portrayed as the perfect hero according to his boasts, and he stays true to all nine noble virtues, making him more noble than Grendel in more ways than not. But being noble is more than just following the Vikings’ virtues. One could be stronger in some areas and weaker in others compared to another, but how well they play their part can determine how noble they are.

"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive...." Joseph Campbell made this comment on the search for meaning common to every man's life. His statement implies that what we seem bent on finding is that higher spark for which we would all be willing to live or die; we look for some key equation through which we might tie all of the experiences of our life and feel the satisfaction of action toward a goal, rather than the emptiness which sometimes consumes the activities of our existence. He states, however, that we will never find some great

Though he does not actually remember how he’d learned it, John Gardner’s Grendel speaks a language which is similar to that of the human characters in the book and is, therefore, able to understand them. During Grendel’s first encounter with humans, he pleads to them for assistance when he is caught and wounded in a trap. The leader of the humans is Hrothgar who eventually becomes king of the Danes. When Grendel’s cry for help is mistaken for a cry of attack, the humans attack Grendel and wound him more painfully than flesh could be wounded. The first intelligent, speaking beings, with some similarity to himself, which Grendel has encountered, have attacked instead of helped him. It is in this moment that Grendel forms his first opinions of existence; the outside world does not seem to embrace good as he does. In a one-way conversation he has with his mother after the incident (Chapter 2), Grendel says, “ the world resists me and I resist it. That’s all there is. The mountains are what I define them as.” In the statement, “ the mountains are what I define them as”, Grendel starts to form a belief of a sort of reality which does not actually exist. Life is meant to be lived as the owner wishes to live it; it is what you

From all of this, the only real explanation for his war on the Danes is this: Grendel is pure evil. “So Hrothgar 's men lived happy in his hall till the monster stirred, that demon, that fiend, Grendel, who haunted the moors” (Beowulf 1: Line 15). Hrothgar 's men, firstly, provoked Grendel simply by being happy. Any demon such as Grendel hates happiness and wants nothing but to steal, kill, and destroy that happiness in someone 's life. Throughout Beowulf, Grendel is called many names, and demon, monster, and fiend are the most frequent. It is no wonder he loved killing. Grendel was born into evil, said to be a descendant of Cain, the world 's first murderer. Grendel 's mother was evil herself, being a sea serpent who did not stray from indulging in evil either. One the fact of Grendel being evil, one piece of evidence stands above them all. “Killing as often as he could, coming alone, bloodthirsty, and horrible. Though he lived in Herot, when the night hid him, he never dared to touch King Hrothgar 's glorious throne; protected by God” (Beowulf 2: Line 80). God is good, and He will always triumph. Grendel knew he could not match the power of God, who loved Hrothgar 's throne. If Grendel were to

“ People fear what they do not understand. ” In the original 1888 edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, this saying is excessively shown throughout the journey of Frankenstein himself and his creation known as “ the creature.” Fear is spreaded in this famous, gothic novel because the epitome of society is lacked by both the creator and the creation, leading to much misunderstanding with who is the real monster. In this novel, the true monster is society because the ideals indirectly presented led Frankenstein to abhor and abandon the creature, the ultimate isolation of both, and the delirious vengeance developed by the two.

Almost all Monsters have either physical deformities or psychological issues that leads them to do social harm due to some type of curse. Grendel is a large beast that has troubled and terrified the people of Heriot in the land of spear Danes for more than twelve decades in the epic poem Beowulf translated by E. Talbot Donaldson. This grim spirt would wonder around King Hrothgar’s mead-hall in the evening when the people of Heriot were enjoying their night and would he was determined to kill the strongest of the men, and his mission was to kill all of them. "Grendel held sway and fought against right, one against all, until the best of the house stood empty .it was a long time, the length of twelve winters that the lord of the Scyldings suffered

Monsters have proven to be more than just the fiendish appearance or the evil within such creatures – their monstrosity symbolizes, more or less, the characteristics that define mankind and/or our innermost fears. Prior to this Exploration of the Humanities course, I have interpreted monsters for what they are: heartless and destructive creatures that generate fear. However, I never bothered what the true cause of such fear is – only associating the gruesome presence with a psychological reaction of horror. But taking this class allowed me to broaden my perspective on monsters and monstrosity: humans fear the “Other” because we as individuals have an “Other” within us (subconsciously) that we are not willing to show to those in our