Grendel

Short Research Paper – Question 3

In the late 1960s to the mid 1970s, the Untied States was undergoing some controversial events. Events such as the Vietnam war were quickly leading the American people and society to easily loose their minds and forget that they are in fact human. At the same time these disasterious events were occuring, an author by the name of John Gardner was fussing around writing his book entitiled Grendel. While Gardner was creating his masterpice, he was taking into deep consideration how he could encorperate the series of events happening around him, and place them in his book in a very secretive way. This is what Gardner accomplished.

In the earlier years of his life, his brother had died in a freak accident. Gardner however, was part of it and places the fault on himself, causing him a life of pain, guilt and mourning. It seems as though he placed the anger that was building up inside of him in Grendel. Gardner is known widely for his edition and version of the epic story of Beowulf. He decided to create his version of the story by taking it by the perspective of the monster himself, named Grendel; hence the name of the book. Grendel is the side of the story that no one hears, or quite frankly cares about. Grendel watches the Geayets day in and day out, watching their every move and closly analyzing them as a species. He makes several side notes to himself about the humans and how the act, behave and break out in war against each other. Describing war and other deadly instances in the book is his way of secretively placing how he feels about society in his works.

Veltri 2

One example of this occurs in chapter one when he is attacking Herorot, when the Shaper is the only human to have the presence of mind to jumpo out the back window of the meadhall, despite his blindness. This is meant to poke fun at humans’ inherent tendancy to freeze up and all but lose their common sense during moments of extreme stress. The...