Review of John Gardner’s Grendel

“Aargh! Yaww!”

Can I say much more? I sympathize with Grendel’s thoughts about life to an extent. Certainly after reading Beowulf, one is tempted to say Grendel is a deeper character. Granted Grendel is not totally redeemed.

Assuming there is any truth to anything in the mythos of Beowulf, the truth is maybe that Beowulf is not the good guy. Nor do we want him to be the good guy? Should he be a good guy?

As a corollary, the dragon Grendel meets in this book (presumably the same dragon that causes trouble for Beowulf in the original) to me represents Smaug more than Smaug represents himself in Tolkien’s Hobbit. In short, find some gold and sit on it. Perhaps the revisionary ratio applied in reverse whereby Gardner re-interprets Smaug to interpret the dragon that Tolkien interpreted. That dynamic itself may be the postmodern trend in modern literature.

Overall, Grendel’s loneliness is palpable. The less we like Grendel by knowing him more, the more we invariably sympathize with Grendel. But Grendel is not presented as the hero we want to sympathize with. It’s troubling. But justice for Grendel may have never been considered prior to Gardner’s reinterpretation.

Often, we likely feel that we meet the dragon who can tell us the secrets of the world. Indeed, these answers may be in front of us all the time, but we can’t understand them. Gardner — perhaps intentionally or unintentionally — inverts the Jungian archetype of the wise old man that counsels the hero. Instead of Gandalf we get the dragon. Perhaps this is fitting; is the opposite of Gandalf, Smaug? Instead of a Rembrandt, we get a subject of a Goya painting after the events in the painting take place. But without the horror.

The book leave the reader with more questions than it can answer. It also leaves us unsettled. It’s now one of my favorite books.

© Charles Edward Andrew Lincoln IV