I don't really know enough about John Gardner to be too confident in my analysis what he intended by this book, and the online reviews and essays are wildly contradictory.  But personally I read it as a tale of Western Christian triumphalism over existentialism.  Beowulf and the other humans, most importantly the Shaper, represent the idea that there is a purpose to life and order in the universe.  Grendel, influenced by the dragon, believes that existence is its own end, that life is meaningless.  But even Grendel is plagued by the realization that his world view is empty and unfulfilling, so when he hears the Shaper's song:

    He told of an ancient feud between two brothers which split the world between darkness and light.
    And I, Grendel, was the dark side, he said in effect. The terrible race God cursed. I believed him.
    Such was the power of the Shaper's harp!

The Shaper's implicit message--that human existence serves a purpose and that man, through the cultivation of art, science and religion, is realizing a destiny--is more than Grendel can take:

    Thus I fled, ridiculous hairy creature torn apart by poetry... I gnashed my teeth and clutched the
    sides of my head as if to heal the split, but I couldn't.

Unable to reconcile the beauty of the Shaper's vision and his own dark urge to deny existence any meaning, Grendel tries to destroy the humans.  But, of course, the humans in following the vision have developed the capacity to withstand his primal fury and Beowulf dispatches him--thus ever the confrontations between light and dark.  To this extent, except for giving the beast credit for a pretty well developed philosophical sense, the story is relatively traditional and follows the original (read Orrin's review).  Moreover, it confirms our understanding of human history, that great societies developed following the adoption of structured belief systems, and that they overwhelmed those necessarily primitive groups which failed to comprehend a general purpose to their own existence.

The great innovation here, and the malignancy within the novel, lies in its narrative form.  Gardner, by allowing the monster to narrate the story, implies that there are two equally valid sides to the story.  This device has, not surprisingly, become quite common, particularly as a way to let female and minority characters give their own angles on great literature or history.  Typically it is used to demonstrate that the generally white, male, and Christian authors of the classics have presented only a partial, perhaps propagandistic, and possibly simply dishonest, version of events that actually happened quite differently.  This trend is part of the broader modern tendency toward moral relativism, political correctness, and denial of absolute standards of morality, truth, and beauty.  In this instance, Gardner came down on the right side of the cultural divide, and merely used the device to flesh out the monster.  But as a general proposition, the idea that the Western Canon presents only a partisan view of the world, one that we need not assume is valid, is truly destructive of our shared cultural inheritance and is to be abhorred.  Stories do indeed have two sides; but at the point where we surrender our capacity to say that one side is right and one is simply wrong, we will have wrought catastrophic damage upon our own culture..

That said, the book, though far inferior to the original, is still entertaining.

David Sandberg's Review:

How to explain the work Grendel? It's not easy. In my opinion it is certainly one of the best works in English. But it is elusive to explain exactly why this is so. Grendel manages to capture something wonderfully, elegantly elusive in the human soul - something which does not even truly have a name. I could write whole paragraphs simply trying to elucidate on this ephemeral yet pervasive quality in the book - and never really hit on it exactly. Simpler blunter words come easily to mind. World angst. Existential futility. Ennui. None of these really do it for me though.

Grendel is art. The plot of the book is, as most everyone knows, the tale of Beowulf, which is habitually inflicted on High School students as some kind of literary puberty rite in towns all across America. I can't imagine how many millions of American school children have had to delve into Beowulf, as College Prep students do, beginning their obligatory peregrination into the origins of English. I will not discuss Beowulf. Having to read some of its passages in High School in Dedham Massachusetts I have tried very successfully to block it out. Like Algebra, Beowulf has been meaningless in my life. Grendel tells the same tale from the monster's point of view. Grendel has not been meaningless in my life. Just the opposite.

I first read Grendel fifteen or twenty years ago.  As anyone who reads history knows - kingdoms, satrapies, empires, commonwealths, archduchies, monarchies, nomates, ruled by kings, emperors, czars,  dauphins, viceroys, Grand Dukes et al come and go across the stage of human history. They have their exits and their entrances and each plays its little part in the progress of humanity. Marie Antoinette is interchangeable with the Empress Alexandra who is interchangeable with Catherine de Medici and so on. Kings and Queens come and go but the stories are chronically the same. In Grendel we are exposed to this endless cyclicality of human history. Grendel is only too aware of the futility of human progress. Times change but people do not. They are small frail frightened creatures of an hour. They live and die so easily. Ultimately they mean nothing. The whole pageant of history sweeps on to another time and another place - with  the same cast of characters. For Grendel, humanity is utterly boring - a dull thing.

He explores how the individual fits in the unfeeling insensitive universe. He questions and dismisses God - he embraces nihilism and greed. He is tutored in this by a Dragon. What is the individual? What is his place in the scheme of things? What is a monster and what is a hero? Grendel poses the questions. Grendel frames them for us with ease. But there are no answers because the questions themselves are totally and purely irrational. The universe, despite its fairy tale prettiness, is an empty directionless thing. Simply conceiving of these soul testing questions is madness, and Grendel is mad. How can a monster be anything else?

Dave rating A+++ "A Must Read"

(Reviewed:11-May-00)

Grade: (B) Orrin C. Judd

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