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Grendel is one of three antagonists, along with Grendel's mother and the dragon, in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf (AD 700–1000). In the poem, Grendel is feared by all but Beowulf.

Story

The poem Beowulf is contained in the Nowell Codex. As noted in lines 105–114 and lines 1260–1267 of Beowulf, Grendel and his mother are described as descendants of the Biblical Cain. Beowulf leaves Geatland in order to find and destroy Grendel, who has been attacking Heorot, killing and eating anyone he finds there. Barring his lineage, all motives for his attacks are left up to the reader. Usually in most film or literature adaptions, Grendel attacks the hall after having been disturbed by the noise the drunken revelers have made. One cryptic scene in which Grendel sits in the abandon dies in his cave under the swamp. Beowulf later engages in a fierce battle with Grendel's mother, over whom he triumphs. Following her death, Beowulf finds Grendel's corpse and removes the head, which he keeps as a trophy. Beowulf then returns to the surface and to his men at the "ninth hour" (l. 1600, "nōn", about 3pm).^[1] He returns to Heorot, where he is given many gifts by an even more grateful Hroðgar.

Scholarship

Tolkien

In 1936, J.R.R. Tolkien's Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics discussed Grendel and the dragon in Beowulf. This essay was the first work of scholarship in which Anglo-Saxon literature was seriously examined for its literary merits—not just scholarship about the origins of the English language as was popular in the 19th century.

Debate over description

During the following decades, the exact description of Grendel would become a source of debate for scholars. Indeed, because his exact appearance is never directly described in Old English by the original Beowulf poet, part of the debate revolves around what is known, namely his descent from the biblical Cain (who was the first murderer in Abrahamic religions).

Monster

Some scholars have linked Grendel's descent from Cain to the monsters and giants of The Cain Tradition.^[2]

Seamus Heaney, in his translation of Beowulf, writes in lines 1351–1355 that Grendel is vaguely human in shape, though much larger:

... the other, warped

in the shape of a man, moves beyond the pale

bigger than any man, an unnatural birth

called Grendel by the country people

in former days.^[3]

Heaney's translation of lines 1637–1639 also notes that his disembodied head is so large that it takes four men to transport it. Furthermore, in lines 983–89, when Grendel's torn arm is inspected, Heaney describes it as being covered in impenetrable scales and horny growths:

Every nail, claw-scale and spur, every spike

and welt on the hand of that heathen brute

was like barbed steel. Everybody said

there was no honed iron hard enough

to pierce him through, no time proofed blade

that could cut his brutal blood caked claw^[4]

Peter Dickinson (1979) argued that seeing as the considered distinction between man and beast at the time the poem was written was simply man's bipedalism, the given description of Grendel being man-like does not necessarily imply that Grendel is meant to be humanoid, going as far as stating that Grendel could easily have been a bipedal dragon.^[5]

Non-monster

Other scholars such as Kuhn (1979) have questioned a monstrous description, stating:

There are five disputed instances of āglǣca [three of which are in Beowulf] 649, 1269, 1512...In the first...the referent can be either Beowulf or Grendel. If the poet and his audience felt the word to have two meanings, 'monster,' and 'hero,' the ambiguity would be troublesome; but if by āglǣca they understood a 'fighter,' the ambiguity would be of little consequence, for battle was destined for both Beowulf and Grendel and both were fierce fighters (216–7).

O'Keefe has suggested that Grendel resembles a Berserker, because of numerous associations that seem to point to this possibility.^[6]

Grendelsmere

In Worcestershire there was a pond called Grendelsmere near Abbots Morton during the Old English era. The name is likely to be an allusion to Grendel from Beowulf. The pond is now extinct.^[7] .

Grendel in film, literature, and popular culture

Grendel is a character in several movies and novels, three including one novel by John Gardner titled “Grendel” ^[8], the movie “Beowulf and Grendel” released in 2005, directed by Sturla Gunnarsson, and the eighth century Anglo-Saxon epic poem “Beowulf” ^[8]. He is one of the main antagonists of these movies and novels, which demonstrate a similar story line. In the poem, Grendel is introduced as a monster, specifically a Christian devil ^[8]. Described as the “sun-lover,” Grendel is not the true source of evil; His mother is. Although a monster by appearance and through his actions, Grendel actually demonstrates human emotions, and is “one of the progeny of Satan cast out of heaven” ^[8]. He goes into the banquesting hall of a nearby village as an intruder, and causes a rucus, killing several innocent people in his path ^[8]. In the novel, he is an outcast living in the swamplands, and this is the main cause for his belligerent random attacks; he is simply bitter, jealous and lonely. Grendel represents and descends from a character who encapsulates an evil, malicious, mischievous figure.

References

• Jack, George. Beowulf : A Student Edition. Oxford University Press: New York, 1997.
• Klaeber, Frederick, ed. Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg. Third ed. Boston: Heath, 1950.
• Kuhn, Sherman M. "Old English Aglaeca-Middle Irish Olach". Linguistic Method : Essays in Honor of Herbert Penzl. Eds. Irmengard Rauch and Gerald F. Carr. The Hague, New York: Mouton Publishers, 1979. 213–30.
• Tolkien, J.R.R. Beowulf, the Monsters and the Critics. (Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture, British Academy, 1936). First ed. London: Humphrey Milford, 1937.
• Cawson, Frank. "The Monsters in the Mind: The Face of Evil in Myth, Literature, and Contemporary Life". Sussex, Enlgand: Book Guild, 1995: 38-39.
• Gardner, John. "Grendel". New York, 1971.

External links

• Arby Stones, "Hellhounds, Werewolves and the Germanic Underworld"
• "Monsters of Beowulf"

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From Wikiquote

Grendel is a 1971 novel by John Gardner. It retells Beowulf from Grendel's point of view.

Chapter One

• And so begins the twelfth year of my idiotic war. The pain of it! The stupidity!

• (Talking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see.)

Chapter Two

• That night, for the first time, I saw men.

• I understood that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. I understood that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist. All the rest, I saw, is merely what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly—as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back.

Chapter Three

• What was he? The man had changed the world, had torn up the past by its thick, gnarled roots and had transmuted it, and they, who knew the truth, remembered it his way--and so did I.

Chapter Four

• "He reshapes the world," I whispered, belligerent. "So his name implies. He stares strange-eyed at the mindless world and turns dry sticks to gold."

• "The Shaper may yet improve men's minds, bring peace to the miserable Danes." But they were doomed, I knew, and I was glad. No denying it. Let them wander the fogroads of Hell.

Chapter Five

• He closed his eyes, still smiling. "Pick an apocalypse, any apocalypse. A sea of black oil and dead things. No wind. No light. Nothing stirring, not even an ant, a spider. A silent universe. Such is the end of the flicker of time, the brief hot fuse of events and ideas set off, accidentally, and snuffed out, accidentally, by man. Not a real ending of course, nor even a beginning. Mere ripple in Time's stream."

• “Nevertheless, something will come of all this,” I said.
  “Nothing,” he said. “A brief pulsation in the black hole of eternity. My advice to you—”
  “Wait and see,” I said.
  He shook his head. “My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it.”

• All pigs eat cheese.
  Old Snaggle is a pig.
  If Snaggle is sick and refuses to eat, try cheese.

• “You improve them, my boy! Can’t you see that yourself? You stimulate them! You make them think and scheme. You drive them to poetry, science, religion, all that makes them what they are for as long as they last. You are, so to speak, the brute existent by which they learn to define themselves. The exile, captivity, death they shirk from—the blunt facts of their mortality, their abandonment—that’s what you make them recognize, embrace! You are mankind, or man’s condition: inseparable as the mountain-climber and the mountain.”

• "Personally," he said, "my great ambition is to count all this," --he waved vaguely at the treasure around him--"and possibly sort it into piles."

• "Importance is derived from the immanence of infinitude in the finite."

Chapter Six

• "I've never seen a live hero before. I thought they were only in poetry. Ah, ah, it must be a terrible burden, though, being a hero--glory reaper, harvester of monsters! Everybody always watching you, weighing you, seeing if you're still heroic. You know how it is--he he! Sooner or later the harvest virgin will make her mistake in the haystack." I laughed.

• "Hey!" he yelled. A forgivable lapse.

• "Such is life," I said, and mocked a sigh. "Such is dignity."

Chapter Seven

• Pity poor Hrothgar,
  Grendel's foe!
  Pity poor Grendel,
  O,O,O!

• Grendel is crazy,
  O,O,O!
  Thinks old Hrothgar
  Makes it snow!

• Pity poor Grengar,
  Hrothdel's foe!
  Down goes the whirlpool:
  Eek! No, no!

• I will count my numberless blessings one by one.
  
  I. My teeth are sound.
  I. The roof of my cave is sound.
  I. I have not committed the ultimate act of nihilism: I have not killed the queen.
  I. Yet.

Chapter Eight

• (O hear me, rocks and trees, loud waterfalls! You imagine I tell you these thing just to hear myself speak? A little respect there, brothers and sisters!

(Thus poor Grendel,

anger's child,

red eyes hidden in the dark of verbs,

brachiating with a hoot from rhyme to rhyme.)

• "All systems are evil. All governments are evil. Not just a trifle evil. Monstrously evil."

• "If you want me to help you destroy a government, I'm here to serve. But as for Universal Justice--" He laughed.

Chapter Nine

• The trees are dead. The days are an arrow in a dead man's chest.

• Something is coming, strange as spring. I am afraid.

• "It is I," I say. "The Destroyer."

Chapter Ten

• Tedium is the worst pain.

• I am not the only monster on these moors.
  I met an old woman as wild as the wind
  Striding in white out of midnight's den.
  Her cloak was in rags, and her flesh, it was lean,
  And her eyes, her murdered eyes...

• Nihil ex nihilo, I always say.

Chapter Eleven

• I am mad with joy.--At least I think it's joy.

• O happy Grendel! Fifteen glorious heroes, proud in their battle dress, fat as cows!

• His voice, though powerful, was mild. Voice of a dead thing, calm as dry sticks and ice when the wind blows over them. He had a strange face that, little by litte, grew unsettling to me: it was a face, or so it seemed for an instant, from a dream I had almost forgotten. The eyes slanted downward, never blinking, unfeeling as a snake's. He had no more beard than a fish. He smiled as he spoke, but it was as if the gentle voice, the childlike yet faintly ironic smile were holding something back, some magician-power that could blast stone cliffs to ashes as lighting blasts trees.

• I understood at last the look in his eyes. He was insane.

• The Geats build up the fire, prepare to sleep.
  And now, silence.
  Darkness.
  It is time.

Chapter Twelve

• Grendel, Grendel! You make the world by whispers, second by second. Are you blind to that? Whether you make it a grave or garden of roses is not the point. Feel the wall: is it not hard? He smashes me against it. Hard, yes! Observe the hardness, write it down in careful runes. Now, sing of walls! Sing!

• "I sing of walls," I howl. "Hooray for the hardness of walls!"

• Terrible, he whispers. Terrible. He laughs and lets out fire.

• "Poor Grendel's had an accident," I whisper. "So may you all."

External links

Wikipedia has an article about:

Grendel (novel)

Wikipedia page on Grendel the monster