Grendel

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Summary: John Gardner's GRENDEL
Review: John Gardner's GRENDELis a retelling of the epic poem BEOWULF from the monster's point of view. It paints a touching picture of Grendel's (the monster) struggle between his need to be a part of the human world and his disgust of human transgressions. I enjoyed the book, because it lends more depth to the characters than BEOWULF did. I found it thought provoking and sometimes humorous to follow Grendel, his mother, the dragon, Hrothgar, Wealtheow, Unferth, and the Shaper through the tortuous moment of space-time that encompassed their lives.

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Summary: they had the faces of rats
Review: I read beowulf before reading grendal as everyone should. grendal is the perfect villain he is tormented inside and in turn takes pleaqsure in causing others pain. This book kept me alot more interested than Beowulf perhaps becouse of the modern language use (making it easier too understand), or perhaps just because it was a very interesting point of view after reading beowulf and hearing his point of view. i liked how sadistic grendal was when it came too killing, i also enjoyed how much he wanted too be like humans even though he hated them. I would definantly recomend this book too anyone who is interested in the never ending struggle of good and evil

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Summary: Grendel
Review: I enjoyed reading Grendel more than Beowulf. Its much more interesting and had more of a plot to follow. Each chapter seemed to have a different theme, for example chapter sevens theme was value. Unlike in Boewulf, always having their boasts. In Grendel there was always a battle or some sort of action to keep me intriged. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys constant battles and action, underlying themes.

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Summary: Grendel Review
Review: I thought that the book was very interesting because it showed how being alone with only your mother and no one else, because they are all afraid of you, makes you a very lonley person and depressed peron. I thought the book "Grendel" was an exciting book to read because you never got board reading it, there were always new suprises. I also though that the book was detailed so that you could imagine this actually happening.
I would recommend this book because I enjoyed reading it and I think that anyone else reading it would feel the same way.

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Summary: An Elevated Look At Misery & Monster
Review: _Grendel_ is the sort of book at you either love or hate. And I love it for the beauty, the accuracy, and the intesity of its themes. _Grendel_ is the epic of Beowulf told from the vantage of the grotesque monster Grendel. We are accordingly introduced to the ruthless nature of the beast. Yet there is a certain innocence and lofty understanding that renders Grendel into an unlikely protagonist, caught between a life of unfathomable (read: invincible) suffering and pitiless wrath. There is a chapter in this book, set in a dragon's cave, that is so utterly amazing, so philosophically prudent, it deserves to be read again and again (in fact, it is so dense at first that it most likely will need to be read again and again). A detailed and succulent study in psychology, _Grendel_ deserves to be taught alongside Beowulf in high school literature courses. And it fully deserves a read from anyone searching for something poetically substantial in the prose he/she reads.

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Summary: The Original Monster Mash?
Review: John Gardner has written a work that's truly inspired: he has taken the story of Grendel -- perhaps THE original monster movie -- and reimaging, re-envisioned, and re-invigorated it by twisting the point of view so that the events unfold from the monster itself. Told on a grand scale, Gardner takes you inside the innocence and ferociousness of the antagonist, leading you to marvel at the discovery that even monsters may be completely misunderstood.

Some parts of the book are a tad uneven, but of particular note should be Grendel's meeting with the dragon. This sequence -- with the dragon spending the bulk of the time "philosophizing" about life, liberty, and happiness -- is worth the price of the book alone.

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Summary: THis is a great book
Review: Although i havent completly read this book through yet i'm sure i will like it. i read beowulf in school and enjoyed that also. All in all i think grendel is one of my favorite villans just because he was the first in British literature. Go anglo-saxxons!

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Summary: View the old epic from the monster's point of view
Review: What if you could see into the mind of Grendel, the terrifying creature of the night from Beowulf? Well, with this book by John Gardner, you can. Brutal at times, irreverent at others, and very cynical at others, Grendel wanders around for many years watching the development of the various human tribes and the emergence of Hrothgar as a sort of king among them. He spends twelve years in a unique relationship with the king, trying first to make friends with the Danes (he is attacked) and later making raids and killing the most drunken of Hrothgar's thanes. The notorious coward Unferth (the one who later insults Beowulf) is also developed here--Grendel has such contempt and pity for Unferth that he will not kill him (thus giving him a hero's death) despite Unferth's repeated attempts to fight him.

In the poem Beowulf, Grendel is a very flat character. He is, in fact, the epitome of evil, unfeeling and cruel. He comes, he kills and eats people, he leaves. Then he comes back. This book gives Grendel a personality. He knows he is a member of the fallen (Cain's) race, and accepts that fact. He is lonely, and cannot even get companionship from his mother, who has long ceased to communicate. In fact, his only real 'friends' are the Danes he kills. Still, he knows he is dependent on Hrothgar's survival. 'If I murdered the last of the Scyldings,' he muses, 'what would I live for?'

This book gives excellent insight into the character of Grendel, and will definitely change the way you look at the poem Beowulf. Gardner's Grendel is a creature who determines to kill Beowulf for the honor of Hrothgar, so that his thanes will not have been outdone by a newcomer. I highly recommend this short work for anyone interested in the great old English epic.

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Summary: A thinking man's monster...
Review: John Gardner's GRENDEL is a challenging, provocative project; it surrounds a very simple, captivating hook- "let's see things from the perspective of Beowulf's grand nemesis"- with a text that does not yield in the least to a cursory, detached perusal. This is not weightless entertainment meant to be experienced on a lawn chair set in front of a booming, rolling ocean, the seagulls squawking and flapping overhead, the sand burning and glinting below. Nevertheless, however stupefied one might become while absorbing many of the thematic attributes on display, it is an unquestioned presupposition that many readers will find Gardner's creative philosophical essay a value-added reading session.

Grendel is a beast. A horrible, tacky promulgation of evil which slithers through the mere and squats in the forest, spying upon Hrothgar and his subservient thanes, torn at times between impulsive desire to strip them of their flesh and drain them of their blood and a more reserved, diplomatic approach: shoot for crony status with the tribal humans, become a component of their hierarchy. Grendel is no ordinary monster, though- he is quite intelligent and introspective, and he is possessed of a deep intellectual thirst about the world around him, and how he fits into it; in essence, this gargantuan, rumbling menace is a Socrates/Kant/Plato at heart. Thus, we are afforded a first-person narrative which supplies interesting insight into the creature's thoughts and beliefs, which are varied and surprisingly sharp.

And one of the characters which both fascinates and confounds Grendel's thinking is the harp-playing bard, known as the Shaper. This charismatic individual spins lusty tales of faraway lands and great battles and feisty seas, all in an effort to gather favor and employment in the hall of Hrothgar...and certainly, the man succeeds, for his relation of these noble adventures in jaunty lyrical form captivate the collective imagination of the king and his loyal subjects. Grendel is critically suspicious of the Shaper, and his reservations are confirmed when he pays a visit to the dragon, an immemorial oracle of sorts, and a philosopher in its own right. As time goes on, as winter comes and sets in, fierce and freezing, the narration tells of battles and deaths and humiliations and enslavements- Grendel falls in love, and through it all, through everything, he tries, dutiful as a drone, to make sense of it all, to find his true point of reference and relevance, especially as he finds himself waiting for the change that is coming, a mutagenic agent which will certainly shift all of his foundations.

One of the biggest obstacles in need of immediate surmounting when applying oneself to the book is the poetically trying nature of the prose itself; nearly every sentence represents a voluptuous, voluminous metaphor, and each metaphor is cleverly encrypted with self-contradicting concepts and richly ironic constructs, as well as an overall general intimation that what appears to be sound argument is in fact a capricious, wanton presentation of pabulum valiantly attempting to pass itself off as paradigm- at times, a search for a key to the ciphers within seemed a fruitless effort. To show what it was like to read any given passage in GRENDEL, imagine if this entire review were written as follows:

The words, they come teeming at the reader, engorged and engrossed on a luxurious high, for after bivouacking in contextual places where it is possible for them to acquire novel etymological connotations and thus overwrite the old semantical laws- as forbidden as that is by the crusty old dragons which roam hallowed halls dedicated to inculcating the young neophyte intellects for vague political purposes- they are full of haughty hubris and silver-sallow envy of the very things they wished to be; Grendel, for his part, that epic-mythic scurvy scourge, is as complex as the calculus needed by a clergyman to denounce the universe as anything but biblical and altogether as anti-entropy as a space of infinite volume under constant temperature and pressure. The literary experience contained within the pages sinks into your bones like a catechistic cold, imploring you to remember its ideologies even as you struggle to regain your own congenital compass; do not try and suffer the embarrassment of attempted consolidation and reconciliation of Gardner's professed dogma with the amorphous versions of the cyclical mythology handed down through the ages, first through anonymous and then, finally, eponymous legions...

That is what GRENDEL was; that's how it felt. As can be seen, the preceding paragraph is as convoluted and crenelated as a catalytic enzyme in its quaternary state- yet, such a biochemical constituent represents a rational, orderly construction, a natural form, one that makes sense even though it is densely complex and vividly difficult to comprehend at first study; this analogy is perhaps useful when considering the imposing style in ubiquitous use throughout the story. The essential point is that the possibility of identifying and understanding worthwhile meanings in Gardner's writing definitely does exist, just as it is doable for science to relate the mechanism of a protein with its jaw-dropping design. And the meanings you may or may not derive tend to captivate whether you find them or not; that may not make a whole lot of sense, but then again, anyone who has finished the book probably knows it already. Cross I-think-therefore-I-am with existential nihilism and present it in a Harlan Ellison-like beaker and the picture will almost draw itself.

Excellent book; still, it will only garner three stars, because it is an academic exercise at heart, and that aspect must be taken into account.

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Summary: Interesting perspective on classic story
Review: Last fall, I read Beowulf; ever since then, I've wanted to read John Gardner's Grendel as well in order to get "the other side of the story." This book served as my introduction to nihilism, which proved to be interesting; expectedly, Grendel's life revolves around the destruction of things and people around him. I enjoyed the portrayal of Grendel's mother because Gardner showed her as desolate and nearly dependent on her son. This was an interesting departure from the despair-ridden, revenge-seeking character in Beowulf.

The book's climax comes in the last ten pages when Beowulf appears, and ironically enough, I read these pages as an excerpt last year. However, having read Beowulf, the ending was already "spoiled," so to speak. (Still, it seems good triumphs over evil more often in early literature than during another time period.)

Overall, if one reads Beowulf, I recommend they also read Grendel. Without Beowulf, however, this book would be confusing and difficult to follow.