Grendel

British Literature

It is awfully challenging for someone to make it through life without having others to share one's joy, happiness, or even sorrow. Feelings of abandonment and neglect usually stem from being solitary. No one wants to be tied to these emotions, but unlike solitude, companionship can change love to hate and intolerance to inspiration. Because many aresusceptible to these emotions it is easy for one to become blinded and manipulated after acquiring friendship. Companionship can negatively affect the decisions people make and the outcomes they are forced to face.
Friendship means to cooperate and support one another. When a mutual relationship is shared, affection and respect is then born mutually. While a person is absent from thisconnection, they are often lead to their own downfall. Loneliness and seclusion guides characters to a situation where they feel as though they do not belong anywhere and are unimportant to society in many ways. In Gardner’s Grendel, It is shown that Grendel cannot find himself in nature; everything around him seems somehow very far away from his reach. It is revealed that being alone was not always such abig struggle for Grendel; in fact he used to appreciate it until he understood how vital it was to have a relationship with something or somebody. “I used to take some pride in that, the caution of owls when my shape loomed in, the alarm I stirred in these giant northern wolves. I was younger then still playing cat and mouse with the world.” (Gardner 10). He was not always aware of thesignificance of companionship, to achieve it he knew he would have to go through a great extent of hard work.
When Grendel was young he thought he had the whole world at the palm of his hands, as though the world was only a game he could control. Through the world’s perspective, Grendel was a beast that must be fled from, a monster that should have no right of being alive. Though Grendel appeared as adreadful animal, he was only a poor being searching for company, seeking his place in the world. “The world resists me, and I resist the world” (Gardner 28). Grendel finds himself in a place where any effort of communication is repeatedly futile. At this point it can be sensed that his search for connection with the world is not only going to affect the decisions he will choose but it will also carryhim to his own destruction.
Through Grendel’s eyes, one can understand his pain; living in a world without communication can dull even the strongest heart. Since child, Grendel lived in a world where any bond with living things was impossible. Whenever he came in contact with nature, it was as though animals ran away from him or just stood there, some even tried to fight him. This allfrustrated Grendel even further. The ones who stood there, it was almost as if they did not see the danger in him, as if they were not smart enough to run away. Yet those who ran away only contributed to his lonely and empty life. The ones who stayed and fought just aided Grendel in realizing the way animals worked, their nature of instinct and stupidity. “That is their happiness: they see all life withoutobserving it” (Gardner 8). To Grendel animals just lived from day to day not knowing the meaning of anything, not thinking or hesitating about actions, they just acted through nature, like machines who worked by what instinct enabled them to do.
Following this further, not finding his own place in nature forces Grendel to seek companionship through humanity. This brings him further pain, whichconverts to anger and changes his attitude completely. Even though humans resembled Grendel in many ways, he was still half animal, and even though he spoke their same language, his monstrous shape only gave them something to fear and panic. After having an acquaintance with humans, Grendel understood that they had a sense of intelligence and just like him, they did not act through instincts...