Grendel

“‘Why are we here?’ I used to ask her. ‘Why do we stand this putrid, stinking hole?’ She trembles at my words. Her fat lips shake. ‘Don’t ask!’ her wiggling claws implore. (She never speaks) ‘Don’t ask!’ It must be some terrible secret, I used to think. I’d give her a crafty squint. She’ll tell me in time, I thought. But she told me nothing.”

Grendel remembers being young and asking his mother existential questions that she could not answer. As a youngster, Grendel appeared to believe that his mother knew the answers, revealing that he once thought of her as a wise and knowledgeable creature. As Grendel matures, his mother’s lack of language begins to disgust him, and he mistrusts her as he begins to realize that there exist no definite answers to his questions.

“And now, by some lunatic theory, they throw on golden rings, old swords, and braided helmets. They wail, the whole crowd, women and men, a kind of song, like a single quavering voice. The song rings up like the greasy smoke and their faces shine with sweat and something that looks like joy. The song swells, pushes through woods and sky, and they’re singing now as if by some lunatic theory they had won. I shake with rage.” 

After Grendel raids Hrothgar’s meadhall, the survivors build a funeral pyre on which they burn the remains of the dead. Grendel reacts to the ritual with anger and irritation; he cannot understand the impracticality of the humans, who destroy valuables in the process, nor can he comprehend the celebratory nature of the ceremony. The funeral gives the humans some sense of closure and understanding of the experience of death, and their song enrages Grendel because it proves that his attack did not seriously enough impact them.

“It filled me with joy, though it was all crazy, and before I knew I could do it, I laughed. They jerked away and stood shaking, looking up.

‘The spirit’s angry,’ one of them whispered.

‘It always has been,’ another one said. ‘That’s why it’s killing the tree.’” 

Grendel’s first human encounter was fraught with misunderstanding and fear. He was still very young when he became trapped between the two tree trunks in which the Dane warriors found him, and he did not understand that he was fearsome to behold. The humans demonstrated fear’s role in exclusion and discrimination, as their fearfulness was a reaction to Grendel’s appearance, not to his behaviors and intentions.