Grendel (1971) is a retelling of the famous epic Beowulf from the perspective of the main antagonist Grendel. Grendel himself is an angsty, self centered individual with many issues, most of which are mental rather than physical (being a monster is hard, but being chronically aware of one's own existence is harder). The story goes through Grendel’s life from childhood to death and takes as much inspiration from Jean Paul Sartre’s existentialist philosophy as it does the original poem, creating a thought provoking, while unusual, work of literature.
Throughout Grendel, the author John Gardner intentionally compares Sartre to that of the mythical monster by reflecting the former's values on the latter: “I finally worked out an interpretation that I believe in,” Gardner explains, “where Grendel is a cosmic principle of intellectual disorder. He liked unreason, in the same way that Jean-Paul Sartre likes unreason.” While this might initially seem like a weird, existentialist manifesto the reality is that it serves as a subtle drag of Sartre’s philosophical views.
Grendel and Sartre are both incredibly creative and intelligent and spend a lot of time and mental energy reflecting on the world around them; however, they often get lost in the circuitous unreason of their own radical ideas. Grendel is surprisingly a relatable character - almost everyone in the world has felt over-aware of themselves and alone in the world. Eventually Grendel realizes that he can shape his own reality, that he, alone, exists “creating the world blink by blink”. Despite this realization, he is unable to escape the identities placed on him by those around him (The Shaper, his mother, the Dragon, etc.) and constantly struggles between accepting and rejecting those identities leading to Grendel's main inner struggle.
Unable to escape the cycle of reject-and-accept, Grendel struggles with the existentialist view he has of himself and the world around him, constantly asking himself who he really is. Grendel will never really get an answer to this question until the end of the novel when he is fatally wounded by Beowulf. Earlier in the novel, Grendel visits the Dragon who helps him realize that his extreme atheistic existentialism can only lead to fatalistic nihilism. In this light, his final words ring truer than ever. “Poor Grendel’s had an accident,” he whispers to the animals that cluster around him as he lays dying. “So may you all.” Yet what might this accident be, if not one that leads to redemption through grace?
In this way, to interpret Grendel as an existentialist manifesto is severely misguided as in the end Grendel needed more than Sartre-style philosophy to save him. His existentialist outlook on life added to his intense negativity led him to fatal nihilism that ultimately led to his downfall and death. To round this off, I’m going to include my favorite part of the book:
“I woke up in the cave, warm firelight flickering on walls. My mother lay picking through the bone pile. When she heard me stir, she turned, wrinkling her forehead, and looked at me. There were no other shapes. I think I dimly understood even then that they'd gone deeper into darkness, away from men. I tried to tell her all that had happened, all that I'd come to understand: the meaningless objectness of the world, the universal bruteness. She only stared, troubled at my noise. She'd forgotten all language long ago, or maybe had never known any. I'd never heard her speak to the other shapes. (How I myself learned to speak I can't remember; it was a long, long time ago.) But I talked on, trying to smash through the walls of her unconsciousness. ‘The world resists me and I resist the world,’ I said. ‘That's all there is. The mountains are what I define them as.’ Ah, monstrous stupidity of childhood, unreasonable hope! I waken with a start and see it over again (in my cave, out walking, or sitting by the mere), the memory rising as if it has been pursuing me. The fire in my mother's eyes brightens and she reaches out as if some current is tearing us apart. ‘The world is all pointless accident,’ I say. Shouting now, my fists clenched. ‘I exist, nothing else.’” (Gardner, 28)
By Sallie
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