Traditional heroes grace the covers of comic books, the posters for films, and come to mind first when the word hero is mentioned. Traditional heroes are the Supermen of the world, the ones who are larger than life and embody every perfect trait everyone should aspire to have. Grendel, the hero of John Gardner’s novel of the same name, is not a traditional hero by any means. Not only is he not a human, nor attractive, but he storms meadhalls and eats people for entertainment; yet he still appears to portray very heroic qualities underneath the homicidal tendencies. Although he finds amusement in killing and consuming people, Grendel is a tragic hero and a victim of fate and circumstance. Grendel is a victim of fate and circumstance in that
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The tragic hero combines fate and has a fatal flaw, all of which lead up to a tragedy. Grendel’s fatal flaw, his error in judgement, is his acceptance of the identity that others give him, the monster, and his tragedy is his eventual death at Beowulf’s hand. His simple heroism, without an adjective, stems from his ability to try to find meaning in a world he knows to be meaningless. As a child, he declares that “the world is all pointless accident” (28) and yet, for his entire life, he continues on his journey to inject his world with meaning instead of shrugging and giving up all hope for meaning such as the …show more content…
An excuse could be that Grendel does not understand that the humans do not think of this as a game like he does but that idea is immediately failed by Grendel’s capacity for rational and philosophical thought. He understands that what he is doing is wrong but he does not stop because being the homicidal monster is the identity that was given to him. In reality, his monstrosity is a tragedy of the story. He has nothing else in the story: a mother who does not speak to him and beady-eyed relatives. His only friend is “[his] shadow” (8) and his ache for identity mirrors his ache for a friend: if he is something identifiable then there is someone else out there who is like him, who he can find and to whom he can relate. Grendel’s only choice, without this knowing if he is something definite, leads him to take on the only identity that has ever fit, even if it does not fit perfectly. Grendel is a tragic hero, a victim of fate and circumstance, trying unsuccessfully to find his way in the world before his death. His consumption of humans is simply what comes naturally to him and he is a hero for continuing to exist despite his claims that existence is futile and the world is pointless. His heroism is not traditional but it comes in the face of adversity, such as with all
The tragic hero combines fate and has a fatal flaw, all of which lead up to a tragedy. Grendel’s fatal flaw, his error in judgement, is his acceptance of the identity that others give him, the monster, and his tragedy is his eventual death at Beowulf’s hand. His simple heroism, without an adjective, stems from his ability to try to find meaning in a world he knows to be meaningless. As a child, he declares that “the world is all pointless accident” (28) and yet, for his entire life, he continues on his journey to inject his world with meaning instead of shrugging and giving up all hope for meaning such as the …show more content…
An excuse could be that Grendel does not understand that the humans do not think of this as a game like he does but that idea is immediately failed by Grendel’s capacity for rational and philosophical thought. He understands that what he is doing is wrong but he does not stop because being the homicidal monster is the identity that was given to him. In reality, his monstrosity is a tragedy of the story. He has nothing else in the story: a mother who does not speak to him and beady-eyed relatives. His only friend is “[his] shadow” (8) and his ache for identity mirrors his ache for a friend: if he is something identifiable then there is someone else out there who is like him, who he can find and to whom he can relate. Grendel’s only choice, without this knowing if he is something definite, leads him to take on the only identity that has ever fit, even if it does not fit perfectly. Grendel is a tragic hero, a victim of fate and circumstance, trying unsuccessfully to find his way in the world before his death. His consumption of humans is simply what comes naturally to him and he is a hero for continuing to exist despite his claims that existence is futile and the world is pointless. His heroism is not traditional but it comes in the face of adversity, such as with all