# of Words: 405

Now's the time to ask yourself what you really know about heroes. No, really: what do you know to be true about them? Got it? Now collect all that up into a little mental sack and throw it from your mind. Inside this Grendel, Gardner--a pretty challenging guy in real life, too--compels us to look closely at what we've believed about noble behavior since the earliest of times.

And what better means to do this than to go back to Beowulf, the earliest epic poem composed in (what passes for) English?

But this time, the boasters need to step aside and make room for the real celebrity. In this book, Grendel, Stalker at the Night, Mere Stomper, Slurper-Downer of Thanes, and Basic Terror to all Humanity gets a Significant makeover. As he tells the story from his point of view, we see more than only a gloomy, cave-dwelling creep of a monster. Grendel is really only a sentimental, misunderstood bully who shows us that the "personalities" of the story are a pack of ignorant, wasteful, violent, vengeful, superstitious bottom dwellers.

All that within one experimental, wickedly humorous, awfully awful story. We watch Grendel as he meets the cast of characters out of Beowulf and tries to set himself in relation to these people who are everything he isn't. That's a tough run for a tender young monster. Each of the people he would like to admire behave in unsatisfactory manners; not only that, they also misinterpret his every little missteps (you know, like eating the people who endanger him) as sure signs that he doesn't belong.

Grendel quickly learns that he's going to be excluded from of all meadhall action indefinitely. So what's a monster to do? Sulk in his cave all day? Or take action and make some "fun" for himself? Thus begins 12 years of war against King Hrothgar and his thanes. When you've read Beowulf, you know how it ends.

However, what you can not see from reading Beowulf--at least not as clearly--are the challenges to what we thought we understood about some heavy issues: the nature of heroism; what it means to be monstrous; the way society and household work; what presence really means. This book has everything: life, the universe, everything. Gardner places these issues front and center as he refocuses the story on what's assumed to be the dark side.

You'll be surprised who you locate there--and that you don't.

Related Papers

Death Of A Salesman Arthur Miller

Ambition. It is one of those things which may be either your best friend or your worst enemy. On one hand, ambition can inspire us to get out of bed in the morning and follow our dreams. On the other hand, ambition will keep us from recognizing our own limitations, trapping us at the delusional grandeur of envisioned achievements. Death of a Salesman is a tragedy about the gaps between the Loman family's fantasies and the reality of their own lives. The play is a scathing review of the......Read More

Arcadia Tom Stoppard

The wide range of topics in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia has made it a popular for faculty freshman-year read-alongs, as a book which, ideally, may appeal to anyone from emo poets to science nerds. Early reviewers of Arcadia's initial run remarked that Tom Stoppard, like the Tin Man at The Wizard of Oz, had at long last discovered his heart. After almost three decades of plays that a saw more as intellectual exercises compared to heartfelt drama (Stoppard's first success was with Rosencrantz and......Read More

The Godfather Mario Puzo

Don Vito Corleone is the head of an American-Italian Mafia family. His household is just 1 of the 5 families in NY. These households are the most powerful crime organisations of the USA. Of those 5 has the Corleone family the greatest power. However, of course, in NY, there is a good deal of competition between the families. It has been 10 years since the lasst war. Ever since then, het power of Don Corleone was created. Everything remained quiet and calm until a man named Sollozzo came along.......Read More

Related Topics