John Gardner’s Grendel

In the 1000+ years we’ve known the story of Beowulf, poor Grendel has gotten all the bad press.

The monster has been universally reviled as the polar opposite of Beowulf’s human virtues. It took the American novelist John Gardner, in his wickedly funny novel Grendel (1971), to ask a few questions:

Can the hero exist without a monster to fight?

And which one is the true monster, anyway?

Grendel is a terrifyingly savage killer, no doubt. But he’s also a thinker, a passionate metaphysician pondering his place in the universe. He is infinitely more capable of appreciating both beauty and suffering than the men he kills.

He comes to realize that everything has a function. Rams must be rams. Story-tellers must sing. Grendel must kill. There’s nothing more to life than to be true to your nature.

Beowulf, on the other hand, has the voice of a dead thing, eyes like empty pits, unfeeling as a snake’s, as if his body is a disguise for something infinitely more terrible.

And yet, neither can exist without the other.

They are yin and yang. The dragon who will eventually kill Beowulf reminds Grendel that ‘You are mankind, or man’s condition: inseparable as the mountain-climber and the mountain.'

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Painting: Lynd Ward ("Grendel")