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Post by sammywong on Aug 28, 2013 5:45:36 GMT
What I find slightly eerie in the novel are the other creatures in the cave that Grendel and his mother live in...what the heck are they?! Grendel first introduces them, stating
"...large old shapes with smouldering eyes st watching me. A continuous grumble came out of their mouths; their backs were humped. Then little by little it dawned on me that the eyes that seemed to bore into my body were in fact gazing through it, wearily indifferent to my slight obstruction of the darkness. Of the creatures I knew, in those days, only my mom really looked at me..." (16-17.)
Why do you think his mother is different from the rest of the creatures in the cave? Physically, Grendel seems to describe the creatures and his mother with about the same grotesque description. But Gardner also gives Grendel's mother comprehension seemingly less than Grendel's but more that the creatures'.
Do you think Grendel and his mother are in any way related to the other creatures? If so, why is Grendel singled out as the only one with the ability to speak?
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Post by jessicalee on Aug 31, 2013 3:05:30 GMT
Gardner's vague description of the other creatures in the cave is used to further isolate Grendel. These creatures essentially have no identity to Grendel because they never communicate nor interact with eachother. When Gardner says "the eyes that seemed to bore into my body were in fact gazing through it, wearily indifferent to my slight obstruction of the darkness", it seems that the other creatures do not even want to acknowledge Grendel. As for Grendel's mother, her physical actions often make up for her inability to speak. She tries to comfort her son as any mother should and tries to save him when he is in trouble. With that being said, her lack of speech does not go unnoticed by Grendel in that he craves the ability to speak with her to satisfy his feeling of emptiness.
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Post by travistoal on Aug 31, 2013 22:10:45 GMT
There are any number of ways to compare Grendel to another story. One way I like to think of him, which fits in this context, is as Michael Corleone, the son in 'The Godfather' who is drawn between the family business and making an honest living. While reading the book, I always pictured Grendel as Golem/Smeagol from Lord of the Rings. Although the comparison doesn't work literally, it works in the sense that Grendel too is split two ways; his desire to fill basest impulses, and his desire to create art. In my mind, Grendel is an honorary human, in the sense that he holds himself above animals, and can understand and appreciate beauty in the world. However, he has permanent ties to his people, whatever the creatures may be. These beasts have no compassion or humane drive like Grendel. They have lived so long as animals in the caves that that is what they have become. Grendel, with the ability to speak, is an outcast. Although he does not belong with the humans, he is too human for the monsters.
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shanejohnson
New Member
"Kindness is the only investment that never fails." - Thoreau
Posts: 15 
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Post by shanejohnson on Sept 4, 2013 8:40:46 GMT
I marked a number of references to these creatures particularly in the earlier sections of the book. While reading I hypothesized these creatures to be other monsters of Grendel's kind. Note that Grendel questions their identity himself in an aside of sorts, narrating, "Were they my brothers, my uncles, those creatures shuffling brimstone-eyed from room to room, or sitting separate, isolated, muttering forever like underground rivers, each in his private, inviolable gloom?" (21). I saw them as a possible outcome of the isolation and conflicting feelings which Grendel struggles with throughout the novel. Grendel seems to sympathize with these creatures to some extent, as he narrates, "...I understood the emptiness in the eyes of those humpbacked shapes back in the cave" (21). I think it is interesting to consider if Grendel's awareness of these creatures might affect his own actions or self-awareness?
As alluded to by Travis above, I feel one of the main roles of these creatures is to further Grendel's isolated existence between humanity and his savage urges. However I think it is interesting to note that while these 'creatures' seem to further the polarity to humanity on the 'monster' side beyond Grendel and his mother, they display less violence, with their "inviolable gloom" far overshadowing any savagery.
Ultimately I felt many of the references to these creatures exemplify the great language choice throughout the novel by Gardner. Simple phrases such as referring to the creatures as "the other shapes" (28) add a lot to the tone of the novel.
(P.S. Nice alliteration there, Sammy.)
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Post by KimesdarGably on Feb 10, 2019 4:08:03 GMT
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