Literary Analysis Of Grendel

In John Gardner's, Grendel, the character Grendel is an isolated, spiteful, cynical monster that hates everyone. Throughout the book, he experiences difficult obstacles. He is challenged by his conscience and by other characters in the book about his way of being. Grendel has moments where he almost changes his characters, but in the end, his perspective doesn’t change about himself or his surroundings. Thus, the quote, “Poor Grendel’s had an accident, so may you all.” may seem like a blessing in disguise, but it’s actually a curse. Something that Grendel tends to do is to have pity towards him. In the beginning of the story, Grendel said And so begins the twelfth year of my idiotic war. The pain of it! The stupidity! (Grendel 5.) which was misleading because he wasn’t actually in a war with …show more content…
He’s the one who put himself in the difficult situation for being negative, but he’s in denial of that. For example, Grendel says, “ah, the unfairness of everything (Grendel 8).” Grendel is a very negative and selfish person, that he tends to go to a place where he feels bad for himself and that’s all he thinks about. He’s convinced that the world is against him and only against him, that he feels bad for himself because nobody else will and only wishes that bad things happen to everyone as