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Summary Of The Story 'Grinch Who Stole Christmas'

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What Affects How YOU View Yourself?
The Grinch from the Doctor Seuss story, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, is a lonely, grumpy monster, that is the only person in Whoville who hates Christmas, therefore plotting to ruin it. He relates to Grendel because he is also an outsider viewed as a monster, and is not accepted in society. Both the Grinch and Grendel lash out on others because they do not feel accepted. To what extent do the opinions of others impact and change how one views themselves?
When Grendel was young, he used to be more curious about life. As he gets older, his views of himself and the world around him start to darken. A flashback quote stated by him in the first chapter was, “I used to take some pride in that-the caution of owls when my shape looms in, the alarm I stir in these giant northern wolves. I was younger then. Still playing cat and mouse with the universe." (10). Grendel’s mother doesn’t speak to him, and she remains in the cave all the time. She doesn’t interact with society, and …show more content…

They did not accept Grendel and they even tried to physically harm him. Does being alone and feeling rejected give Grendel the right to kill them? How do people classify societal outcasts? Is it physical appearance, personality, where you come from, etc. The humans classify Grendel as a “monster” but does this mean he truly is one? From reading Grendel, I took away that he let society's idea of himself captivate who he thought he really was. Grendel had the potential and the curiosity to be harmless, but he let the powerful words and actions of the humans, the Shaper, and the dragon take over his thoughts. In a way, the humans were just as much monsters in this book for not accepting Grendel, and making him become the monster he was. If the humans were to accept Grendel and they were able to understand each other, prevention of further catastrophes probably could have been

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Up until the end of Chapter 7, Grendel’s actions are influenced by the dragon.   He believes nothing matters, there is no good or bad, and everybody eventually dies. The people of Heort know Grendel as a monster and a killer and he lives up to his reputation.

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He is portrayed in the poem as a horrendous beast with human characteristics, but looking closer to the text, he is a human out-casted and raised to be a monster. Although Grendel is written as a monstrous villain who kills with no remorse, he is actually a complex human with a repressed anger exploding in bursts. Grendel is often described in a negative way. He is reffered to as a demon in the text “from Beowulf”

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Grendel in the novel is very different from the monster in Frankenstein because Grendel wants to and enjoys to humiliate and kill people, the monster in Frankenstein wants to be able to socialize with people without them getting frightened by his appearance. They are alike because they are both alone, they both frighten people with their looks, and they are not welcome in the human world. Grendel in the novel knows he is a fright to people, he is danger. He doesn’t seem to have a problem with that, but at the same time is not proud of it, either. He does like the pain of others, preferably king Hrothgar and his men.

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At the end of Chapter 12, Grendel’s last words were “Poor Grendel’s had an accident … So may you all.” (Gardner 174). Such words are meant as a curse to affect mankind. To start off, Grendel’s relationship with humans are not great.

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The school method of criticism that I will use to analyze the poem "How the Grinch Stole Christmas” is a Marxist critic. It is a theory, the consciousness of a given class at a given historical moment derives from modes of material production that were demonstrated through the relationship between the Grinch and the people of Whoville. The poem is about the Grinch who hates Christmas so he wants to ruin it for people in Whoville, in which he achieved by stealing the presents from them. The Grinch’s hatred towards Christmas was directly shown in the poem, “The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!”

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His violent nature grew so much that he became crazy with the need to kill the humans. Therefore, Grendel’s actions reflect that his existence has drifted away from its partially civilized nature and into the barbaric. Grendel had no choice in becoming more beast than human because external forces constantly push him towards that fate. Whether it was the dragon, the actions of the humans, or Grendel’s own unconscious tendencies, he never really had the opportunity to make a choice, human or beast. What Grendel said and thought always clashed with the situations he encountered until there was simply no possibility of becoming the good in the way

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