Grendel Vs Beowulf Essay

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Gardner’s novel tells Grendel’s side of the story, apart from Beowulf’s heroic version. He uses Grendel as a narrator, in order to pull in readers, emotionally, to the true intentions that Grendel had. Not only so, but by telling Grendel's side of a the story from someone else's perspective, wouldn't really be convincing, as there is no logic in their reasoning, because it could just be opinionated, whereas the protagonist himself, has the credibility to tell the story, as it would also paint him in a different light. Not only would Grendel affect the audience emotionally and have the credibility to tell his story, he also has a better way of describing the misunderstanding between him, and other living things.
Throughout Gardner’s novel, he has Grendel reminisce his past, with his mother and his life as a young beast, blind to what's outside his cave. “Behind my back, at the world's end, my pale slightly glowing fat mother sleeps on, old, sick at heart, in our dingy underground room. Life-bloated, baffled, …show more content…
Grendel is perpetually trapped in one-way communications, whether it is with his babbling mother or with the numerous mute, stupid animals he encounters during the novel. The most significant example of this scenario is Grendel’s inability to communicate with the humans, even though, ironically, they share a common language. Even Grendel’s own mother is either unable or unwilling to communicate with him. Denied any real conversation partner, Grendel is forced to live in an endless interior monologue, with most of his significant conversations taking place within his own head. Lacking any other people with whom to interact, Grendel divides himself into various personas—the sobbing baby, the cold-eyed killer, the raging beast, the charming sycophant, and so on—and thereby manages to create a facsimile of
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