Nihilism in Heroism: A Critical, Comparative Review of Grendel by John Gardner
Existential Critique and Literary Context in Grendel by John Gardner
Some ideas, books, works of art, and religions stand the test of time, while others do not. However, Grendel by John Gardner problematizes this binary by highlighting how nothing stands the test of time, but that everything stands the test of time by virtue of it being time-specific. In other words, ideas are recycled and re-interpreted, and since humanity may be “A brief pulsation in the black hole of eternity” (Gardner 74) all works are essentially timeless in their attempt to reach into a void which will one day render them non-existent. This paradox arises in a short yet profound work which offers critical context for the epic poem Beowulf, and offers a relevant, heartbreaking backstory to Grendel, the monster who is killed in both stories.
The alternative narrative offered from Grendel’s first-person point of view complicates the epic poem’s portrayal of Grendel as simply a bloodthirsty, mindless monster. The poem’s omniscient narrator takes the side of Hrothgar, writing about Grendel that “So Grendel waged his lonely war, / Inflicting constant cruelties on the people, / Atrocious hurt” (Heaney 6). It is this loneliness that Gardner emphasizes, through the fact that Grendel is a singular being who cannot communicate with his mother, nor can human beings understand his way of speaking their language. After the dragon comes to him and tells him that our time is “mere ripple in Time’s stream” (71) Grendel is lonelier than ever. In many ways, the book is a coming-of-age novel, as Grendel grows further and further out of his childlike hopefulness for a better connection with his mother and the world around him. The story does not paint Grendel as perfect; however, it certainly lends important sympathy to him. Other key comparative moments arise, such as Grendel overhearing the men discuss the story of Cain and Abel, and how Grendel “was the dark side” (51). These moments help to humanize Grendel while also criticizing the worldview exhibited by the Cain versus Abel storyline.
The novel further problematizes the notion of simple good versus evil. Grendel is described in the original story as “that dark death-shadow” (5) and “the bane of the race of men” (22). However, Grendel may actually be a villainous hero, an oxymoron so antithetical to the characterization of Beowulf and Grendel in the original epic that it constructs its own worldview. In other words, Grendel is only a shadow of death because he teaches Hrothgar’s men what life is, and he can only be the bane of the race of mankind because if it were not for him, humans would not know themselves to be a race. As the dragon explains to the 12-year-old Grendel, “You drive them to poetry, science, religion, all that makes them what they are for as long as they last. You are, so to speak, the brute existent by which they learn to define themselves” (73). Without Grendel, there would be no Beowulf. Without evil, there is no good. As the dragon elaborates “Scare him to glory!” (73). In this way, Grendel becomes a villainous hero, or at least a driving force of culture, for the Danes and the Geats.
Grendel takes on this worldview by choosing to only kill a few of Hrothgar’s men every now and then. In the epic poem, he is portrayed as thoughtlessly and mercilessly killing every one of the vassals. He is the “grim demon / Haunting the marches, marauding round the heath” (4) who “ruled in defiance of right, / One against all, until the greatest house / In the world stood empty, a deserted wall stead” (5). However, from Grendel’s perspective, he is actually choosing to only occasionally kill just a few of Hrothgar’s men. He does this because “Form is function. What will we call the Hrothgar-Wrecker when Hrothgar has been wrecked?” (91). In other words, Grendel derives some meaning from giving the Danes their own sense of purpose and meaning. If Grendel allows most men to survive his attacks, this gives them something to thank their gods for, something to pin their bravery on. Likewise, Grendel derives some sense of togetherness by terrorizing the men: “there has been something between myself and men when we could fight,” (76) and it is without this mutual meaning-making that Grendel admits he is “as solitary as one live tree in a vast landscape of coal” (76). Both Grendel and Hrothgar’s men are grasping at finding meaning in life. Though Grendel’s view is much more cynical since the dragon tells him everything will turn to dust, both parties are portrayed in the novel as groping aimlessly and violently for something which will validate their time on earth.
Gardner further insults and questions the notion of valiant heroism through the backstory he gives Unferth. In Beowulf, Unferth is introduced as the antithesis to Beowulf. Unferth is weak and fragile. He tries to verbally puff out his chest by mocking an at-sea competition Beowulf engaged in when he was younger, to which Beowulf replies by describing his epic, deep-sea destruction of sea demons, all the while insulting Unferth’s minimal reputation. In Grendel, Unferth is a broken man who, while trying to kill Grendel or heroically be killed by him, is simply buried under a pile of apples Grendel hurls at him. Unferth repeatedly tries to provoke Grendel, however Grendel does not give him the satisfaction of a fight or even being murdered. Unferth goes as far as following Grendel back to his cave, contradicting himself by saying “It will be sung year on year and age on age that Unferth went down through the burning lake” (87) but then asserting that true heroism is doing what is right even if no one knows about it (88). Grendel becomes exasperated with Unferth. He thinks to himself “Reality, alas, is essentially shoddy” (88). Unferth’s backstory thus portrays the contradiction of Beowulf’s heroism and heroism at large. Is it an ideal which hinges on spectatorship and showmanship, or is it a virtue to be carried out even if only in front of God? Gardner seems to say that socially and literarily, people are confused about what heroism is, or should be.
Lastly, it is through the book’s nihilistic argument about time and the meaninglessness of human endeavor that it critiques the notion of reputation and heroic ancestry present in Beowulf. Beowulf introduces himself to the Danes by stating the following: “In his day, my father was a famous man, / A noble warrior name Ecgtheow. / He outlasted many a long winter / And went on his way” (8-9). However, it is from Grendel’s lonely and removed position that a person’s royal legacy becomes unbearably irrelevant. Where Beowulf and men like him are treated as one in an impressive, never-ending line of brave men, Grendel sees ants (39). When he hears the different tribes talk before battle, according to him they just say “things about their fathers and their fathers’ fathers, things about justice and honor and lawful revenge” (35). Without the omniscient narrator siding with Beowulf, all this talk about valor and lineage comes off as drab and cliched.
It is with those words from the dragon, Grendel’s actualization of them, and its other plot points that the book strikes its plunging, sharp, and endlessly relevant critique of the myths of epic heroism perpetuated by early English literature. In a moment of editorializing, one of Hrothgar’s men tells the king’s nephew about “the state” that “If a few men quit work, the police move in. If the borders are threatened, the army rolls out. 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” (119). This passage is a rare injection of modern language and rhetoric. While it is a transparent nod to the reader, it helps to connect the problems with Beowulf-ian notions of good versus evil with contemporary issues such as the police state, totalitarianism, and political power. Gardner draws a connection between the justified violence portrayed in Beowulf against an unknown, outcast, lonely creature with police and military violence. Of course, Grendel is not innocent, but neither are his persecutors. The same is true in modern day.
It is easy to heroize when people villainize; it is easy to cast a violent person as just that without understanding what it is that made them that way. It is reductive to view the world as a battleground of good versus evil, or as a battleground at all. Gardner wrote the novel in the early 1970s, amid protests against a senseless war which valorized the United States and demonized the non-West. Such a worldview has been perpetuated over and over again, as countries which descend from the Beowulfian literary tradition continue to view the world in these strict binaries of good versus bad, Cain versus Abel, bad violence versus good violence. Since Gardner’s work, the United States has waged war on innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan, in addition to its own citizenry, as seen in the movement to incarcerate and criminalize Black Americans in the 1980s with the War on Drugs. In the 21st century, brute military force has been used - ironically - against those protesting police violence, as well as the prison and military industrial complex. People who speak differently, look differently, and who are misunderstood continue to be the victims of justified violence. Unfortunately, that is the main argument Gardner gives in the way of life on earth. In the end, Beowulf’s murder of Grendel is neutralized; it is written as un-dramatic and non-heroic. Grendel dies alone, and it seems that in some ways the dragon’s sardonic creed of “ashes to ashes and slime to slime, amen” (73) is both a rejection of traditional heroism, in addition to a call to action for rooting out social hostility.
Works Cited
Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Eds.
Stephen Greenblatt et al. Vol 1. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2006.
33-99. Print.
Gardner, John. Grendel. Vintage Books, 1971.