The Evolution of Grendel's Worldview Anonymous 12th Grade

In John Gardner’s Grendel, a few key interactions between Grendel and other characters mark the paradigmatic shifts that spur his philosophical evolution. Despite Grendel’s self-proclaimed isolation, his response to these interactions demonstrates his undeniable susceptibility to external ideas. Though at each junction he considers his viewpoint absolute, the new exposures bring about both confluences and conflicts of ideas that instigate Grendel’s further ideological revision. As solitary as Grendel feels, his views of the world and the role he plays in it are irrevocably linked to a few formative interchanges with varying perspectives.

Grendel’s first encounter with a foreign creature sparks his initial sense of dissonance. Grendel, at the time a child only familiar with his mother and other shadowed, shuffling monsters, ventures one day beyond the safety of his sheltered mere. He wanders between two trees and ends up caught between them, unable to move and directly in the path of a charging bull. After surviving the first onslaught remarkably unscathed, Grendel realizes that the bull erred in its calculations before making the charge and aimed too low. Suddenly, Grendel comprehends that the bull lacks the faculties necessary...