Grendel Character Analysis Essay

In the story Grendel by John Gardner the main character, Grendel is not what he seems, his appearance is portrayed as a furry ferocious looking beast- but is that what he really is? When Grendel is young he seems to be a shy curious innocent being, except for the fact he feasts on living things; but that's just simply the way he is made, he doesn’t know any better. As the book goes on Grendel gets increasingly curious and his actions start to become more and more outgoing. When he finds his way through the pit of fire snakes to the human world it leads to nothing but disaster in poor Grendel’s life. The humans view Grendel as nothing more than a scary monster when he was doing nothing but simply watching them. This leads to the theme of …show more content…
He shows a lot of anger towards the world and at himself such as when he is screaming at the top of a cliff; “Pointless, ridiculous monster crouched in the shadows, stinking of dead men, murdered children, martyred cows. I am neither proud or ashamed”. He feels relatively isolated considering the fact his mother is his only acquaintance, and she doesn’t even speak to him. Grendel (other than his mother) is the only of his kind which is a reason why the humans have an unbelievable misunderstanding of him. When curious little Grendel first arrives to the human world they treat him in an awful way that eventually destroys Grendel’s life. Out of simple boredom he keeps returning to the human world to watch them, which he found very interesting; “I found I understood them: it was my own language, but spoken in a strange way... They were small, these creatures, with dead-looking eyes and gray-white faces, and yet in some ways they were like us, except ridiculous and, at the same time, mysteriously irritating, like rats. Their movements were stiff and regular, as if figured by …show more content…
The story of Grendel is told from the point of view of a “monster” which contrasts the fact that normally books describing monsters are told from the point of view of humans. At the very end of the book Grendel has one last final encounter with the humans. One of the people, Beowulf horrifically attacks Grendel for no specific reason. As Grendel has his limbs ripped off, and is howling for his mother animals circle around him to watch him die; “Animals gather around me, enemies of old, to watch me die”. Finally Grendel dies. Although it is unclear if Grendel died at the top of the cliff or if he purposely jumped off, one thing's for sure, Grendel is not the true monster of this book, the humans are, and that is why things are not always as they