"Tedium is the worst pain. The mind lays out the world in block, and the hushed blood wits for revenge. All order, I've come to understand, is theoretical, unreal--a harmless, sensible, smiling mask men slide between the two great, dark realities, the self and the world--two snakepits. The watchful mind lies, cunning and swift, about the dark blood's lust, lies and lies and lies until, weary of talk, the watchman sleeps. Then sudden and swift the enemy strikes from nowhere, the cavernous heart."
(p. 157)
The possibility of expanding upon a previous well-known work in order to open up new possibilities for exploration had ocurred to me even as a young man. I can recall lunches way back when I was in junior high school when I would gather with a small group of friends to expand and offer alternative scenarios for works we were all reading. It was fun to take the viewpoint of another character and explore more fully his (it was rarely her with us) role, even though we lacked the rigor to carry it out systematically.
In this novel, published over forty years ago, Gardner offers the mythical monster Grendel's viewpoint from the epic work of Old English literature, Beowolf. I have to admit, it has been a considerable period of time since I read the original, and recall very little of it. But it was a book I was bound to read because of the numerous references I have encountered to this work lately.
I was fascinated by the way in which the monster is given a voice that contrasts with that we would associate with the monster. In the same way, Frankenstein's monster in the original Mary Shelley novel was a character who seemed to possess a hightened sensibility, one who fulfilled the parameters of a romantic figure. I also recall that Frankenstein's monster has also spent part of his time spying on a family and wishing earnestly to become a part of that unit, expressing a heightened sensibility. He was cursed to play, however, the role of the monster, one who was tormented by loneliness and rejection, and who thus was forced into the role of persecutor of his creator.
In this case, we have a sly and witty take on that role of the voyeur. Grendel also has a heightened sensibility, and seems to chafe at his role. He lives in a deep cave with his mother, a wordless creature who he seems to disregard at the same time that he recognizes and relies on her role as a protective figure. This Grendel is especially susceptible to the power of poetry, and he is tormented continually by the Shaper, that old poet who has joined the household of his nemesis Hrothgar, the old and wily king, and who sings songs that weave meaning into a story of mercenary predation on the part of this human figure.
For Hrothgar is not a character who evokes much sympathy. He is an astute figure who slowly expands his realm by trickery and political maneouvers, and as his kingdom grows, Grendel becomes more and more hostile to him. Grendel is the creature who reflects upon morality and the significance of his interactions with this world. Is there a world seperate from him? It would appear to him not, for he muses, "I understood that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist. All the rest, I saw, is merely what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly--as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back. I create the whole universe, blink by blink. --An ugly god pitifully dying in a tree!" (p. 22)
But in a future encounter he is given to understand the power of narrative, and this shakes him to the core. He will scoff at this "fiction", insisting repeatedly that he knows the truth, that he has the priviledged vantage point as an outsider, that he has seen the true motivations and the true nature of those other beings that he insists on observing, that world that fascinates him so much. He will come to understand the power of narrative that takes the form of mythology, one that assigns, implacably, roles. And he has a role assigned to him as well.
Incidentally, in the course of this education, he will have a comical but also unnerving dialogue with a dragon, one who proclaims his epistemological certainty and who reminds me very much of a surly college professor. This dragon teases and taunts Grendel, and attempts to teach him, but ulimately dismisses the monster, choosing to watch jealously over his treasure. The dragon's explanations verge on the impenetrable, and constitute another attempt at deception, which is the same reaction that I experienced in my own interactions with these sly professors who scalded me as well.
Grendel will scoff continually on the fictions that are elaborated to support the role assigned both to himself as well as to Hrothgar. This is, after all, a metatextual exercise in which the characters, or at least Grendel and the furious warrior Unferth who asserts that he cares little if he is killed if it means he will be immortalized in song, reflect on their roles. Of course, Grendel will not accomodate Unferth, refusing either to be killed by him or to kill him, thus humiliating him thoroughly.
The monster will embark on nightly depredations, keeping to his role as a deadly antagonist. Why could he not be a protagonist? Why does he not have a Shaper (a poet) to sing his praises? It is enought that while he can kill Hrothgar's men easily, he must also resign himself to the immortality as the deadly antagonist that is thrust on him like the bull who attacks him early in the book, when Grendel is stuck in a tree and is unable to extricate himself. And Grendel is never able to extricate himself from his role, acknowledging and feeling frustration over the power of these roles, and characters such as the sister to the challenger, a woman who is sacrificed in order to save her brother.
"Then, at last, moving slowly, as if walking in a dream, a woman in a robe of threaded silver came gliding from the hall. Her smooth long hair was as red as fire and soft as the ruddy sheen on dragon's gold. Her face was gentle, mysteriously calm. The night became more still." (p. 100)
An entrance and a first impression that is, more than improbably (and Grendel is always proclaiming to be a realist), is suspiciously manipulative, like the epic songs of the Shaper, and all the more enfuriating because they seem, percisely, so tawdry and cheap, like the baubles guarded by the dragon. Is is enfuriating, but Grendel can't help but be seduced by her power, and humilated by his own vulnerability.
In the end, Grendel continues his depredations until he witnesses the arrival of the strangers, the Geats from across the sea, who are lead by a warrior who is impossibly muscled, a "He-man" cartoon figure who radiates calm assurance and confidence, and who evokes fear in Grendel. It is just such an encounter that Grendel's mother, in her wordless anxiety, has anticipated, and yet she has been powerless to stop her son, the monster who insists on testing the power of this narrative. Is there any "reality" outside of narrative? It would appear that Grendel is continually forced to recognize and acknowledge the obtuseness of a story that will grind and devour him.
And such is the case, Grendel attacks, and is overcome, and is humilated, forced to flee after having had his arm ripped off by this human. No longer is he immune, for it doesn't suit the story any longer, and we are all imprisoned by stories. The Shaper is the one who, on his deathbed, had anticipated the arrival of the strangers, and who had affirmed even in death the power of the story. And this story can't help but seem implacable to the reader as well, who after a fashion, had come to identify with Grendel, seing in him certainly a much more expansive and reflective individual that the one-dimensional humans in this epic of long ago.
Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013
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