Grendel Case

Understand another person is extremely hard, but when we lack the ability to communicate with another species it makes it near impossible to understand and learn to respect them. The novel Grendel was written by John Gardner. This novel allows the reader to get inside the mind of Grendel, the narrator, and sympathize with him and better understand him. This story is meant for readers to understand Grendel's ways of thinking in the poem Beowulf. In the novel Grendel fights a twelve year war with the humans. Grendel's first interaction with humans leaves both sides with curiosity, fear, and confusion.

When Grendel and the humans first meet they have no prior knowledge of each other and jump to conclusions on the other's identity and ways of living. When Grendel first sees the humans, he believes that some of them have, "shinny domes... with horns coming out, like the bull's" (Gardner 23). Gardner's use of the simile between the bull and the humans allows the reader to see that Grendel believes the humans act in the same mechanical pattern as the bull did. Grendel's interactions before he meets the humans is always with animals who "f[i]ght by instinct, blind mechanism ages old" (Gardner 21). The humans are also unaware of Grendel's identity and what he is capable of. The humans make several guesses saying he is a, "beast like fungus..." or, "some kind of oak-tree spirit" (Gardner 24-25). The humans attempt to identify Grendel, but throughout the novel we discover that neither side can fully understand what is is the other think or how they feel. Both Grendel and the humans are first confused as to how to react to each other, but their first impressions of one another dominated their ways of thinking and how they differ from one another.

After Grendel laughs, the humans become afraid of him begin to attack him which frightens Grendel. When he first sees their actions, he thinks they are simply just another creature that he can outsmart and beat. Gardner allows his readers to experience the fear Grendel has for men throughout the book when Grendel explains that he was, "dealing with no dull mechanical bull but with thinking creatures, pattern makers, the most dangerous things [he'd] ever met" (Gardner 27). At the beginning of the book Grendel seems like the ruler of the forest, but once he meets man he realizes that they are his toughest enemies and soon the war begins between them. The humans are also frightened of Grendel just as much as he is of them. When they believe that Grendel is only a spirit, the king and his men are not afraid him, but after he moans and they realize he is a monster they begin to throw "darts like hot coals" into Grendel (Gardner 27). When Grendel is only trying to communicate with the humans they take it as a threat and begin to attack. Their mistaken fear and quick judgment to attack is a foreshadow of