Michael Martinez Ms. Ahlmann Grendel Critical Analysis English G4 11/5/14 A static character, seen as malevolent, enraged by the actions of men, requiring little motivation for malicious acts; this is Grendel at his finest hour in the epic poem Beowulf. He is predictable once on the move, like a machine, returning regularly, as if by clockwork, for his human snack. John Gardner however, reconstructs the character in his novel Grendel, which is based on the plot of the epic Beowulf. The Grendel created by Gardner is anything but static. Grendel grows and becomes a much more humanized character through a series of events, possibly growing more than any hero of the modern day. Through his searching and changing of Grendel, his anti-war viewpoints, …show more content…
He covered his head, roaring at me. He tried to charge through the barrage, but he couldn’t make it three feet. I slammed on straight into his pock-marked nose, and blood spurted out like joining rivers. It made the floor slippery, and he went down. Clang! I bent double with laughter. (85) The reduction of a hero to tears is one indignity, and the use of apples to do so raises it to another level (Milosh, Gardner). In this scene Grendel’s laughter mocks the pompous glory and victory that humans attribute to war. Gardner uses Grendel to speak to the ignorance that encapsulates war and the lies upon which war is dignified. To accompany the antiheroic theme and the humanization of Grendel is a comment on the shaper’s role. Anglo-Saxon society held the shaper in a place of honor, bringing nobility and dignity to the people (Milosh, Gardner). The shaper is extremely skilled in his craft. He is so skilled that Grendel becomes moved: “His manner of speaking was infecting me, making me pompous” (Gardner 49). However moving the shaper may seem, it is all just a skill of tradition and convention. However beautiful the artistry may be, the purpose, to Grendel, seems to be obvious: deception and distortion of the reality of the situation. As Grendel recounts, is “Bullshit!”