Greetings, Anglo-Saxon poetry fans and postmodern monster
lovers alike. That’s a combination of readers I didn’t expect to come across in
my fantasy excavations. Sure, there are plenty of contemporary fantasy works
featuring monsters from gothic literature—e.g. vampires and werewolves—and
folklore—e.g. fairies, witches and werewolves again (?)—that give the monsters a
sympathetic perspective. Heck, more and more we get revamped fairy tales that
turn classic villains into heroes or anti-heroes. So, what makes John
Gardner’s Grendel stand out?
Let’s start with the fact that you probably know Grendel’s
original source, the epic poem Beowulf,
from one of three sources: your high school literature class, the 2007
3D-animated film with Angelina Jolie as Grendel’s mostly naked lizard mother,
or the Wishbone book adaptation Be A
Wolf! (Okay, maybe that last one only applies to me.) The point is that
Grendel is the monster that the titular hero of Beowulf faces and defeats with pure strength and will. He serves
mainly as a superhuman threat to King Hrothgar and the Danes, prompting Beowulf
to show up for some old-fashioned monster slaying. Typical mythic story. Yet,
to be fair, even in the original poem, the lines of good and evil are not so
clearly defined.
A throwaway reference is made that Grendel may be a
descendant of Cain, the murderous son of Adam and Eve who offed his brother
Abel out of envy for God’s favor. This allusion paints Grendel as something
inherently diabolic beyond his ghastly attacks on the king’s hall. His actions
result in many a dead man, thus Beowulf’s efforts to kill Grendel seem doubly
noble. That said, during the mano-a-mano fight, the poem portrays Beowulf as a monstrous
creature, too, perhaps akin to Grendel.
The similarities drawn between Grendel and Beowulf could be
enough to write a reversed-perspective story that explores them, and I did
expect a stronger focus on Beowulf in Gardner’s novel. Instead, much of the
novel centers purely on Grendel’s existential angst, and not in a bad way. Just
a mind-tripping one.
