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Everyday we go through our lives, not
realizing that other people think differently than ourselves. We don’t
realize that other people have different morals, different values, and
most of all, different lifestyles. We don’t look too closely because
what we may find is something truly scary, something so horrifying that
we close our eyes, turn our backs and try to forget about it. While
reading Grendel, I realized that human nature was something I
never really thought about it. Obviously, I’ve grown up with only humans
and I’ve always taken humanity for granted. I’ve heard of awful things
happening in the world but since it didn’t follow me wherever I went, it
always slipped my mind. I was always too mesmerized by the way the
hero’s worked that I never paid attention to the “bad guys” the
“villains”. But now I know to read more closely.
As I
read page after page, my mind started working differently. In my
mind Grendel is someone who’s a monster but doesn’t want to be. He
doesn’t have a drop of humanity in his body, yet I think he wants to
be a good person. He’s afraid of death but then again he laughs in
the face of it. He thinks there is no one who could possibly
threaten him with it. Grendel doesn’t particularly like his life, he
likes to hate but at the same time it makes him hate himself for
being so beastly. He’s scared of his own roar echoing off the walls.
“I stand in the
high wind balance, blackening the night with my stench, gazing down
to cliffs that fall away to cliffs, and once again I am aware of my
potential: I could die.
I am terrified at
the sound of my own huge voice in the darkness. I stand there
shaking from head to foot, moved to the deep-sea depths of my being,
like a creature thrown into audience with thunder.
At the same time,
I am secretly unfooled. The uproar is only my own shriek, and chasms
are, like all things vast, inanimate. They will not snatch me in a
thousand years, unless, if a lunatic fit of religion, I jump.”
(Gardner; page 9-10)
In
our community (America), we respect loyalty, the truth and kindness.
But with someone who has been raised to eat humans, think nothing of
a life and plunder through the forest it’s bound that what they
think is right, their not going to change for another. It’s like
religion, if you’re raised believing science is the making of the
world, there is absolutely no way that you can believe that
Christianity is real, the same goes for all other religions. Grendel
simply doesn’t get what the world is made of. He understands that
what he’s doing is wrong but he doesn’t know why.
Grendel sees humans as stupid, cowardly and fearful. He thinks that
they are there to mock him and make him angry. He doesn’t fully
understand the purpose of men. He thinks they are just in the way of
him searching for things that he knows he can’t have, the things he
wishes to see and do aren’t there and he’s annoyed that his mind is
pretending that they’re there.
“I understood
that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute
enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fear. I understood
that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist. All the rest, I saw, is
merely what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly-as blindly as
all that is not myself pushes back. I create the whole universe,
blink by blink.” (Gardner; page 21-22)
Grendel doesn’t have anything to live for, he thinks he has no love
in his heart and is jealous of the people he spies on who do. He
loves his mother but has always pushed back the feeling because of
the way her gaze makes him feel. He feels self conscious of his
movements and undermined by her. He feels like if she doesn’t love
him, why should he? He thinks she’s ugly and stupid with no mind of
her own, but yet he’s compelled to still stay with her.
This
world is so full of noise. Right now I can hear the cars outside my
door, I can hear the faint sound of music coming from the office,
the TV playing in the living room, the children screaming in the
park across the street. I’ve always had someone to talk to, a
friend, a family member, even my dog but I realized that in a world
with no one to speak to, no one to communicate with, no one to laugh
or cry with, this world would seem extremely lonely, so lonely I
personally wouldn’t be able to handle it. It would be bad as a human
if you were alone, but imagine if you were a twelve foot, hairy,
muscular thing.
The
only creature that would get close to him without raising their
guard, judge or give him a second look is his mother, and he can’t
even communicate with her because she knows no language. I think
that I would become a monster even if I had been raised in a
community with morals. Grendel looks down at these people from the
mountains, laughing, singing, feasting together. I felt bad for
Grendel. He had no one, just the world around him which he believed
as a cruel test with no reward even if he passed it. He saw these
people as weak because he realized that they have each other to lean
on, they had each others backs and he sees this as a chink in their
armor.
Grendel hides his desperation for love and friendship with his anger
and resentment towards them. He respects the Shaper’s ability to
create a song from the heart and soul but he looks at his admiration
as letting his guard down and he quickly sets his pain into action.
He secretly wants to be human, but hiding it from himself he’s been
scraped down to only his evilness, not wanting to show any signs of
“humanity”.
“I whisper to the
night. I chuckle. The night, as usual, doesn’t comment.”
(Gardner; page 143)
This
book made me think of all my favorite childhood stories. The Lion
King, Anastasia, The Wizard of Oz and
Peter Cottontail, every one of them I admired in every single
way. Then I thought of the antagonists, the bad guys, the ones that
everyone hates. No wonder they’re so bitter, I would be cranky if
every one hated me for my actions if it was just the way I was
raised. For instance, Scar had always been pushed to the side, never
getting any fame because his little brother outdid him in every way.
He was lead to a lonely and jealous world. Which lead him to the
burning passion to become king but in the most appalling ways.
While reading Grendel I was
appalled by his crude thoughts and his in put of the world. It made
me sick with disgust that this creature could have a book written
about his life because I thought there was only flesh and death in
his soul. I thought that the author was some sick minded weirdo that
had negative thoughts toward this world and the people that were in
it. I didn’t sympathize for him because I wasn’t reading between the
lines.
I now see what has led Grendel to such a
painful and tormented way of thinking. I read Beowulf
before this and because of it I was dreading the end of this book. I
wish that Grendel could have seen the good in this world instead of
the bad. I wish that Grendel could have experienced things that he
had always wanted but never able to reach it because of things that
he could not control. It was just his nature.
I rated this book an 8 out of 10. |
