Examples Of Nihilism In Grendel

There are many different outlooks on life. Some believe that the world we exist in is meaningless and that nothing we do will be of importance. Others, however, have a much more lighthearted approach, focusing on enjoying their lives as much as possible and looking for enjoyable activities to partake in. This search for a purpose in life, or existentialism, shapes our realities and our ambitions. Depending on our ideology, our morals will be shaped in drastically different ways as well and it will have a very powerful impact on our character. John Gardner used his novel Grendel to portray a wide variety of ideologies and philosophies and warned us that if we choose to focus on the more pessimistic principles, like nihilism, we will lose …show more content…
With this, he showed the reader that selecting an ideology with a cynical connotation or a negative set of morals to live by. This will result in you paving yourself a gloomy path where you shut out any sort of potential greatness or possibilities that could have a positive effect on you because, in the end, you won’t make a difference. Grendel is the perfect example of this idea. Throughout the beginning of the book, Grendel experimented with different ideas to live by in order to have a better understanding of the world. In his state of confusion, he visited the dragon to get advice on how he should live. The dragon told him that “It’s all the same in the end, matter and motion, simple and complex. No difference, finally.” (73). This quote means that no matter what Grendel does, he won’t have any effect on what will happen and that his life is essentially pointless. This idea that there is no meaning in anything that you do and that everything that happens is “hopeless accident” is a heavily nihilistic perspective of the world. Grendel decided to follow in the dragon’s footsteps and he …show more content…
After his transition, however, he “burst in when they were all asleep … and slit them open and devoured them on the spot” which caused him to feel “a strange, unearthly joy” (79). Gardner chose words like “burst in” and “devoured” to emphasize just how calamitous Grendel’s actions were. This emphasized the point that Grendel had changed as a character because it showed how he had gone from being cautious and curious before becoming a nihilist to destructive and careless after his tragic conversion. This scene also shows how Grendel has come to enjoy the destruction that he brings upon the Danes so much that he staged more attacks the following nights until it became a routine to terrorize the poor citizens every night. If he had chosen a more productive ideology, he may have considered using his abilities like his strength or invulnerability to try and aid the Danes, which could have gained him respect and virtue. This in turn could have resulted in him achieving his first goal of being welcomed into their