Grendel Character Analysis

The Formation of Grendel’s Character
The novel Grendel is one of the most profound and controversial works of contemporary American author John Gardner. Being a very versatile creative personality- novelist, specialist in study of literature, and critic; Gardner’s work is distinguished by its versatility. As a professional researcher of medieval English literature, Gardner had a particular interest in Anglo-Saxon poetry of the eighth century, especially the epic Beowulf. The novel Grendel was created in the literary material of this epic. The author uses a part of the story presenting the events from the point of view of the monster Grendel. The latter stands for a symbol of individualism which plays the dominant role in the worldview of modern
The surrounding reality interests him, and he believes that a man is the only related entity. The main feature of the people he discovered at the very first meeting and at that moment he realized that was dealing with “no dull mechanical bull but with thinking creatures, pattern makers, the most dangerous things I’d ever met” (Gardner 27). Grendel carefully and open-mindedly watches over people's lives, but his attitude towards them remains ironic, but he treats himself the same way. Only some people, in particular, to the old King Hrothgar, bring out respect and compassion; few were able to have his admiration. Among them, the blind storyteller and Valteov, the wife of
The purpose of which is inaccessible, and the long-awaited reality implies a supernatural order. A mythological situation is imaginatively presented in Gardner’s philosophical novel and returns to the tragic human moral problem when the choice is excluded that the fully conscious accept moral decision. In such circumstances, moral position can occur only in the acceptance or rejection of the dictates of fate or