John Gardner’s novel, Grendel, is about much more than the story of a classic epic told through the eyes of its monster. Instead, it dives into complex ideas about the balance between order and disorder, sanity and insanity, and the quest for an individual to find his or her purpose in the world. In her article titled “John Gardner’s Order and Disorder: Grendel and The Sunlight Dialogues”, Judy Smith Murr discusses such ideas, focusing most strongly on the representations of order and chaos in the novels, and how they fuse together to produce varying effects. A second article, “‘You improve them, my boy!’: Insanity and Self-Discovery in Gardner’s Grendel” written by Reuben Sanchez, analyzes the roles of sanity, craziness, and the interdependence
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Murr, whose article is pointedly focused on ideas of order and disorder in Grendel, views the battle between Grendel and Beowulf the culmination of the back and forth between order and disorder seen in the novel. Neither is inherently stronger than the opposition, and whoever emerges victorious from the melee does so purely on a matter of chance. As Murr states, “order threatens disorder as much as disorder unhinges order” (101). When the two meet, they become caught in a stalemate. The pairs, both of Grendel and Beowulf and disorder and order, are trapped head to head, and the only way for one to win over the other is to get lucky. Sanchez also mentions this same point about chance and Grendel’s defeat being considered an accident, but he adds another idea as well. Instead of viewing Grendel’s final fight at Hrothgar as the moment at which the two central opposites meet, Sanchez focuses on Grendel’s exploration and discovery of the human world. Rather than Sanchez’s ideas about sanity and insanity meeting in a polarized standoff like that suggested by Murr, they morph together, clouding the idea that Grendel’s world is the one considered insane and Hrothgar the one that makes sense. Instead of a simple kill to eat system, the human world is organized into subgroups that kill each other to kill, and value shiny metal above each other’s lives. Murr and Sanchez both agree that odd events take place when two opposites meet and mix, but the exact specifications of those meetings
Murr, whose article is pointedly focused on ideas of order and disorder in Grendel, views the battle between Grendel and Beowulf the culmination of the back and forth between order and disorder seen in the novel. Neither is inherently stronger than the opposition, and whoever emerges victorious from the melee does so purely on a matter of chance. As Murr states, “order threatens disorder as much as disorder unhinges order” (101). When the two meet, they become caught in a stalemate. The pairs, both of Grendel and Beowulf and disorder and order, are trapped head to head, and the only way for one to win over the other is to get lucky. Sanchez also mentions this same point about chance and Grendel’s defeat being considered an accident, but he adds another idea as well. Instead of viewing Grendel’s final fight at Hrothgar as the moment at which the two central opposites meet, Sanchez focuses on Grendel’s exploration and discovery of the human world. Rather than Sanchez’s ideas about sanity and insanity meeting in a polarized standoff like that suggested by Murr, they morph together, clouding the idea that Grendel’s world is the one considered insane and Hrothgar the one that makes sense. Instead of a simple kill to eat system, the human world is organized into subgroups that kill each other to kill, and value shiny metal above each other’s lives. Murr and Sanchez both agree that odd events take place when two opposites meet and mix, but the exact specifications of those meetings