Existential Nihilism In Beowulf

Despite the Dragon’s lectures about the meaningless of life and the unreasonable theories the humans come up with to explain how the world works, the Dragon is to one to give Grendel the push to embrace his monster identity and make murder his reason for living. The Dragon’s philosophy is existential nihilism, in which one believes life is meaningless and pointless. At the beginning of his lectures, the Dragon talked to Grendel about how all life on Earth will eventually die, so anything they do in life will not have any importance or impact in comparison to the world’s seemingly eternal life span. The Dragon tells Grendel, “‘You improve them my boy! Can’t you see that yourself? You stimulate them! You make them think and scheme….If man’s the irrelevance that interests you, stick with him! Scare him to glory!’” (Gardner 72-73). The Dragon ironically contradicts his previous spout on existential nihilism when he enthusiastically advises Grendel to seek the monster identity and continue killing people for the purpose of helping the humans build …show more content…
The philosophies of existential nihilism and existentialism influence Grendel’s course of actions and thoughts on life and humanity throughout the course of the novel. The Dragon teaches Grendel about the meaningless of life, in which everything exists to die, while the Shaper teaches Grendel about the beauty of words. After accepting the Dragon’s proposal and becoming the monster the Shaper sings of that battles with the heroes, Grendel finds a new purpose in life and a new source of entertainment. However, his streak of successful murders ends upon meeting Beowulf who is a real hero that Grendel is not up to par with whether it is physically or mentally. Through the interactions of various characters with differing philosophies and beliefs, Grendel is able to better shape his view of the