Grendel

He is searching for the best way to live in the world.

�Themes�

• The Meaning and/or Meaninglessness of Life
• The Power of Art/Song/Language/Shaping
• The Need for Community
• Good vs. Evil
• Freedom vs. Determinism

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Chapter One

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• Aries- Ram March 21 – April 19
• Symbolizes the beginning of a new cycle just like the cycle that has ended
• All has happened before; all will happen again
• Theory of the world as repetition and endless cycles (one of the oldest Western philosophies)

Chapter Two

• Taurus- Bull April 20-May 20
• Leaves his cave of ignorance for the first time
• When he is trapped he accepts his mother won’t save him, he concludes:
• “that the world was nothing; a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. I understood that I alone exist. …I create the universe blink by blink” (22).
• When he is back in the cave, “ The world is all pointless accident. …I exist, nothing else” (280).

Chapter Three

• Gemini- Twins May 21-June 20
• Grendel begins life as a Solipsist
• Solipsism: is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind, alone, is sure to exist.
• His solipsism is challenged by the Shaper
• He creates a better world (transforms the village into a growing city-state merely by changing the men’s perception)
• Shaper “had torn up the past by its thick, gnarled roots and transmuted it, and they, who knew the truth, remembered it his way and so did I”(43).
• All who hear the Shaper’s visionary history believe in it, even though they remember what actually happened. Grendel wants to believe, but cries out “Lost!” (45) because he cannot let the dream replace the reality of his experience.

Chapter Four

• Cancer- Crab June 21-July 22
• Shows the growth of the religion (Christianity) that will nourish the new world the Shaper has created for Hrothgar’s villagers
• Biblical stories: Creation/Cain & Abel highlight the theme of Good vs. Evil
• After hearing the Shaper’s story Grendel rushes out to ask forgiveness for his part in the tale. He wants the vision to be true because it gives some order and purpose to the world (even if the order demands he is the villain).

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Chapter Five

• Leo- The Lion July 23-August 22
• Grendel learns what his role will be in the new order the Shaper has presented
• Dragon represents Nihilism: a viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless
• Dragon tells Grendel that he improves man by acting as his enemy

Chapter 6

• Virgo- The Maiden (Virgin) August 23-September 22
• Grendel finds his role in the new order: “I was Grendel, Ruiner of Meadhalls, Wrecker of Kings!” (80)
• Before this he had no real sense of himself
• He accepted the images others had of him
• Mother’s image of him as a “son”
• Villagers’ image of him as “monster”
• Shaper’s image of him as the “devil”
• He is reborn into Skepticism: the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain

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Chapter 6 (cont.)

• His new role as a skeptic is to be the destroyer of all hypocritical orders men have created.
• “So much for heroism. So much for the harvest-virgin. So much, also, for the alternative visions of blind old poets and dragons” (90).
• Unferth- foil to Grendel. He believes in the Heroic ideals of the warrior culture.
• “You talk of heroism as noble language, dignity. It’s more than that, as my coming here has proved. …Only you and I and God will know the truth. That’s inner heroism” (88).
• Grendel carries him back to the village, thwarting Unferth’s attempts at heroism.

Chapter 7

• Libra = Balance/Scales Sept. 23-Oct. 22
• Wealtheow is given to Hrothgar by her brother as a tribute to Hrothgar’s power
• She brings such a great sense of peace and has such deep faith that she protects the village from Grendel’s ravages
• Grendel’s skeptism is balanced with Wealtheow’s faith (FOIL)

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Chapter 7

• She represents Christian ideals
• Shaper brings the Old Testament to the village; Wealtheow brings the New Testament ideals with her
• At the center of the novel, we have the two contrasting ways of viewing the world:
• Grendel’s belief in chaos and futility balanced by Wealtheow’s belief in order and purpose

Chapter 8

• Scorpio= Scorpion October 23-November 21
• At this point in the book, the plot has been developed, but Beowulf doesn’t arrive for a few more chapters. Gardner does this to explore philosophies, rather than character (as more traditional novels do)
• Machiavelli's ideas enter:
• “Public force is the life and soul of every state…The state is an organization of violence, a monopoly in what it is pleased to call legitimate violence…All systems are evil. All governments are evil. Not just a trifle evil. Monstrously evil” (120).

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Chapter 8

• Machiavellian= can be characterized by deceit, despotism (autocracy), and political manipulation
• Hrothgar’s village has arrived at the age of nation-states and all that matters during such an age is the maintenance of power
• With the replacement of Wealtheow’s love and charity, by Hrothulf’s scheming, we enter the modern age

Chapter 9

• Sagittarius= Archer Nov. 22-Dec. 21
• Another indication of the modern age is depicted through religion
• Village’s religion begins with the Shaper’s delineation between the powers of good and evil
• Danish religion, at this point, is poised between polytheism (many gods) and monotheism

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Chapter 9

• Ork: eldest and wisest of priests
• God’s purpose: “the evocation of novel intensities. He is the lure for our feeling” (132)
• The ultimate Evil: “Time is perpetual perishing, and being actual involves elimination” (132)
• Both of these limitations keep man from understanding the universe as a place where nothing is lost or wasted, which Ork defines as ultimate wisdom
• When Ork tell the other priests his interview with “The Destroyer” they laugh at him and his theories of god.
• Grendel is disturbed by this ridiculing and cannot understand how the younger priests preach what they do not believe

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Chapter 10

• Capricorn= Goat Dec. 22-Jan. 19
• Grendel is puzzled by man’s insensitivity
• He is the only one moved by the Shaper’s death
• He is pessimistic and develops a Nietzschean philosophy (God is dead)
• Because the Shaper is dead “we’re on our own again. Abandoned” (149).
• The Shaper’s art made their world real and now they are alone with no one to mold their reality and infuse it with actuality.

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Chapter 10

• “Nihil ex nihilo, I always say” (150).
• Grendel is recognizing the emptiness of the world without its creator.
• Grendel’s despair and the conclusions he draws from his despair are parallel to Nietzsche’s writings when he faced the death of god.
• At this point in the novel he’s moved from solipsist to skeptic to nihilist. He’s listened/observed different philosophies but he could never believe that an order corresponded to what they described.

Chapter 11

• Aquarius= Water bearer Jan. 20-Feb. 18
• Beowulf arrives; Grendel meditates on his being.
• “All order, I’ve come to understand, is theoretical, unreal- a harmless, sensible, smiling mask men slide between the two great, dark realities, the self and the world” (157).
• “I saw long ago the whole universe as not-my-mother, and I glimpsed my place in it, a hole. Yet I exist, I knew. Then I alone exist, I said. It’s me or it. What glee, that glorious recognition!” (158)

Chapter 11

• Grendel feels that he must create his own order centered around himself and his perceptions of the world.
• He places himself as the center of the world and arranges it accordingly:
• “For the world is divided, experience teaches, into two parts: things to be murdered, and things that would hinder the murder of things” (158)
• Grendel has become an existentialist (existence precedes essence)
• Grendel’s chosen essence, “absolute, final waste” is not much different from what it was before but now he moves beyond a received definition of himself and defines the world in his own terms.

Chapter 12

• Pisces = Fish (end of Astrological cycle) Feb. 19-March 20
• Beowulf beats Grendel until he produces a poem about the wall.
• Beowulf forces Grendel to discard his existentialism and beats Grendel against reality and turns him into an empiricist (knowledge comes with sensory experience)
• He begins with solipsism, “Only I exist,” and ends with empiricism, for which only objects of experience are real.

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Chapter 12�

• What Beowulf says, in effect, is this:
• One looks at the world –bangs one’s head against it– and one has two choices, to accept it as it is or to transform it, shake it to life by imagination. (“Sing walls” (171) Beowulf says. He means not just the wall Grendel’s head has just banged but ALL life’s walls – the walls which lock us away from other people, finally the great walls of birth and death.)
• Grendel has asserted a dead, mechanistic world of brute accident; but by the accident of meeting Beowulf he’s forced to discover how accident can be turned into a good, how imagination can reshape and ultimately improve the world—at least for the lifespan of a given civilization (“A letter from John Gardner…”)