The Monstrous Grendel's Evil

Isolation from society will drive anyone to seek a purpose for living. In Grendel by Jack Gardner, purpose is the purpose behind Grendel’s violent behavior. The novel follows Beowulf’s antagonist’s trials through three phases of his life. In each phase, Grendel learns a valuable lesson about life. Having already lost his will to live, Grendel suffers from isolation in his violent pursuit for meaning. Grendel is a monster who is a distant descendant of the Biblical Cain, the first person to commit homicide, according to the book of Genesis. The shared history between Grendel and humanity only serves to place both into permanent hostility, not to unite the two. Grendel thinks like a human, but has the innate instincts of an animal. He lacks the capability to act above his primitive instincts. Grendel’s existential crisis and his isolation from society drove him to seek for a meaning in life, even if it means he would die a villain.

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

The Old English epic Beowulf is the earliest recorded poem in Old English. The story is set in Scandinavia with the antagonist Grendel. Gendel is a monster and an insensitive character. Grendel was born into a monster and was cursed his entire life. Although Grendel was strong he wasn’t very brave because he only attacks at night when the guards are asleep. He has many characteristics that a monster would have. First and foremost, he was raised to be evil, and never had the chance to be good. Also whenever he would hear joy, he would be filled with anger and hatred. Grendel likes killing people he doesn’t feel any remorse after killing people. An example from the story that shows this is “Snatched up thirty men, smashed them unknowing in their beds and out with their bodies (Genesis,pg 4).”Talking about Grendel ties in with our next evil antagonist known as Cain. Cain is the son of Adam and Eve. He was a farmer who was jealous of his brother who was accepted by God and when Cain was rejected he decided to kill his brother Abel. Unlike Grendel Cain believed in god he just didn’t

In the novel, Grendel, the images of isolation and darkness enhanced the character development of Grendel as he encountered loneliness, developed hatred, and became evil. Isolation and darkness were two important images used throughout the novel. In the beginning, baby Grendel was an innocent being. Initially, he did not kill humans for fun, and he only killed animals for food. With each image of isolation and darkness being portrayed, Grendel began to transform into a lonely, depressed, hateful, and ultimately evil character. The primary burden that Grendel had to endure was that he had nobody to develop a relationship with and nobody to love him in return. Therefore, he became consumed with his own loneliness, depression, and

Later on, after he escapes the men and is observing them they tell how he is evil and this influences Grendel’s mind, “Outside the mead hall, he hears music begin and listens to the scop tell of the archetypal feud between good and evil and how Grendel is the descendant of a cursed race. He believes the shaper and is devastated by what he has learned” (Gardner 50-51). Hearing these men all sing these negative things about him and berate him with such joy shakes Grendel to the bone. He begins to craft himself in the image they have for him, believing he truly is a

A. Grendel is impatient with the music and celebration of Hrothgar’s men; his home is a hell on earth; he was born in slime; his parents are the children of Cain, who were exiled by God; he is family to “a thousand forms of evil,” who angrily fight against God.

"Fate will often spare a man if his courage holds"(Gardner 162). He is not afraid, he does what he believes is right without regret or doubt. Grendel raids Herot, reeking havoc on the hall and annihilating its men, bunches at a time. He does this with no fear. Grendel goes for it and knows what he is doing will get a point across to those who taunted and ridiculed him in the first place, when he did no harm. Instead, he was showing appreciation and acceptance of them, but they jumped to other conclusions and tortured Grendel. Most people see heroes like Spiderman or The Incredible Hulk or Batman, battling the bad guys to do good for their community or to live up to their image of being the biggest and strongest to battle their rivals in a fight for power and to take over the world. Or they see these admired heroes help other people battle their problems. Grendel is not like that. Grendel has nobody to protect. He is alone in the world and has only his feelings and actions to rely on and defend. To have the self-power and the self-motivation to stand up for himself, when he never has had anyone else to guide him to do so, is appraisable.

Grendel felt that he was doing the humans a favor by killing them. Grendel states at one point, ”I understood that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears,”(Gardner 21-22). As the human race lives we have our hopes crushed and our greatest fears realized, there is no point in living in Grendel’s mind. Later Grendel observed this, “In ratty furs the peasants hoe their fields, fat with stupidity, if not with flesh. Their food smells foul the doorways, dungeon dark, where cow-eyed girls give tit to the next generation’s mindless hoe. Old men with ringworm in their beards limp dusty lanes to gather like bony dogs at the god-lined square where the king's justice is dispensed…”(Gardner 113). This makes the world seem like a terrible place to live in and anyone would be happy to escape a reality like this. If you are living in a world like this wouldn’t death be a pleasant escape? Since the world is horrible what is the point of

Grendel is a very complex creature. He questions his existence many times throughout the book, called “Grendel” by John Gardner, even though he is viewed simply as a monster by the creatures around him. He wants to find out what his purpose is in life and if there is more to life than him being simply a monster. In the end, he stands at the edge of a cliff after Beowulf badly injures him. He utters these words before the book ends, “Poor Grendel’s had an accident…so may you all (pg.173).” With these words we are left with questions to what did Grendel mean that he has had an accident and what does “so may you all” imply.

Anyone who defends Grendel or his behavior is guilty of agreeing with a terrible crime and sin in the sight of many. Grendel had but one mission and one purpose: to terrorize and murder. He fulfilled it well.

When Grendel is challenged by Unferth, it is seen as honorable and brave, however he is quickly frightened which can be seen as Gardner explains “ He glanced behind him, making sure he knew exactly where the window was” (Gardner). This shows us Unferth is cautious and anxious about Grendel's presence. Throughout the apple battle, Grendel rapidly displays superiority when he scares Unferth by throwing apples as a joke when he wanted to battle. Unferth becomes impatient with Grendel, aggravated at the lack of professionalism. This event shows a mental

He feels he is destined to be cursed and shunned by humanity. As the chapter goes on, Grendel becomes to be angered at the humans and at God. “It was a cold-blooded lie that a god had lovingly made the world and set out the sun and moon as lights to land-dwellers, that brothers had fought, that one of them was saved, the other cursed” (pg 55). This “presence” was beginning to consume Grendel. Thoughts of confusion and rage were going back and forth in his head.

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

Humans are not born of sins but threw are actions can grown into them.In a sense that is what Grendel is.This is supported by a verse from Romans which says”Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned”.Notice how the qoute said that it came into the world.It was not threw birth but it formed around what the man did.Grendel is not a Human but a monster… a beast…. a Demon.He is the embodiment of what evil is.This quote should be branded on Grendel’s forehead.Grendel as he is nothing but evil,living, breathing sins.Not raised but spawned out of them.He doesn’t have any traits that make him relatable.According to the story, Grendel was referred to as "spawned in that slime,” a biblical allusion to the story of Cain and Abel. Grendel was born as a monster into exile; his

The Tyranny of Grendel is my favorite writing that I have done. This was my creative writing I did for my project on Beowulf. I got a lower grade on this because I had said that I was going to make a second story about another task of Beowulf, but I felt it was unnecessary.