Grendel

If you are like myself a high school senior reading this book for English class, GOOD LUCK! It is by far the least interesting novel I have ever read. Skip it and just look up the sparknotes.

I thought this book would be kinda cool to read since I'm a big fan of Beowulf and have read it several times. Man was I wrong. The writing is terrible. Grendel isn't a monster, he's a cry baby. A story from the "other perspective" has so much potential, but this author didn't use any of it. After reading this book, I wondered if John Gardner read Beowulf at all.

This is not the simple tale of what moves the monster to attack the mead hall. Yes, this is the classic Beowulf tale told from Grendel's perspective, but it's no easy narrative of me-against-him. There is an awful lot more going on here.

Grendel is the basic human, the proto-human animal stripped of all aspects of civilization, what the human is before civilization has had the chance to poison him. He wholly self-centered, a world unto himself. He is pure action and the rawest of emotion, no patience for thought and contemplation. He's capricious, with no moral sense, no real logic. Action is the only thing he knows, and it is what it is, consistent or not. But evil? Not in the least.

As civilization rises, Grendel observes, as only a monster can observe a human, that everything we touch we corrupt and ruin. Trees fall, water is fouled and the game leaves the forest. Ultimately, humanity is pointless and futile; we invent all of our problems. We create envy, ambition, manipulation, subjugation, hierarchy, religion, hope, confidence, arrogance, pride, rationalization and ultimately hubris, and they intertwine to ruin us, as individuals and as tribes. The joy is all around us, as Grendel describes, the bounty and its beauty, life and nature, but we instead choose competition, struggle, corruption, loss, violence and unnatural death.

As civilization coalesces about him, Grendel draws closer to death, and he learns from the humans the value of the vulgar, what it means to be deceitful, what evil really is. He learns agonizingly what solitude is, and wants so desperately to fit in, but cannot. He cannot adapt, and is doomed, and somewhere down deep inside, he knows it. He wants to be included, but he cannot be and never will be. His time is ending, and he must as well. As reason and logic and knowledge come to crowd men's thoughts, his power is ever weaker, until the time comes that he meets his match.

Grendel's story is the sorrow of existence, solitary in birth, life and in death. His mother is an absolute alien, unknowable. She can never truly be his friend, never be his companion or his contemporary. She is the constant reminder of age and the specter of isolation, loneliness and death. She is the ever-present reminder of the future, and is estranged by her very offspring because of it. As a woman she is unknowable, a representation of something to which Grendel mysteriously is drawn but at the same time he is repulsed; he has no concept of how to relate to or respond to his lust, and it escapes him once again in violence.

I recommend readers tackle the original Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (Bilingual Edition) before coming to this revisionist approach. But remember this is not simply a retelling from another point of view. This book is a winner, poetic and lyrical, turning the ancient story of the man versus the monster from one of epic battle and victory to a cautionary tale of what it means to exist in the world of Man.

I'll keep it simple rather than wax poetic. This is one of the best books Ive ever read. I loved it and read it in two days. Wonderful language and arrangement.

It had sat on my shelf for years. I'd pick it up. Put it down. Pick it up. Really, who wants to read a book in which the protagonist is the bad guy?

I finally read Grendel, and it was actually worth my time. There is a very touching scene in which Grendel longs to be other than he is, but cannot find the path.

"My heart was light with Hrothgar's goodness, and leaden with grief at my own bloodthirsty ways. ~ Chapter 4"

There are shades of connection betwixt ill-fated Grendel and the ill-cursed The Children of Húrin. How dire it must be to recognize that one is tainted, and have no hope of a cure. Indeed, where would any of us be without a Redeemer?