Examples Of Evil In Grendel

Don't Judge a Person by their Looks: The Good and Evil in Grendel
Imagine… A monster so hideous that it has “a voice to scream with, but no language; a presence to strike the heart with dread” (Gurewitsch). This monster's name is Grendel. The author John Gardner wrote Grendel to show the choices Grendel made to transform him into a monster. Grendel represents evil because he has made terrible choices all of his existence to become the monster that everyone feared; however a handsome, fearless, pure of heart man named Beowulf arrives to defend and protect the Danes from the monster. Despite difficulties Beowulf chooses from the purity of his heart to save and protect the Danes. These two characters face off against each other in the story of

Grendel's childhood seemed almost normal. Gardner wrote “Of all the creatures I knew, in those days, only my mother really looked at me. Stared at me as if to consume me, like a troll. She loved me, in some mysterious sense I understood without her speaking it” (Gardner 17). Grendel's mother was his only companion and friend; and as he plays by himself he realizes there was more to the world than the cave he calls home. For instance, “I nosed out, in my childish games, every last shark-toothed chamber and hall, every black tentacle of my mother’s cave, and so came at last adventure by adventure, to the pool of the fire snakes” (Gardner 15-16). It was the first time Grendel left the cave, he felt comfortable leaving his cave but this was the first time he encountered the dark world. After Grendel obtained more confidence in leaving his cave. Later he went off on an adventure; at the moment Grendel sees a tree and begins to scale it, he reaches for a branch but the branch breaks, and his foot becomes stuck in the tree. At that moment a bull approached and stopped at the bottom of the tree; Grendel sees the bull, then realizes his mother is not with him to protect him. Grendel started crying out for his mother. This was the first time Grendel experienced pain in the dark