- Get ready for lots more self-analysis in this chapter, 'cause even monsters need to figure out who they are.
- Grendel contemplates the uselessness of his language. Is it ancient? Is it beastly? We're not sure, but in any case, language becomes another burden for him.
- Grendel flashes back to himself as a youngster, full of curiosity for the world he is born into, exploring and playing and generally trying to figure things out.
- During the course of these explorations, he finds the pool of firesnakes—it's on the boundary of the cave he lives in with Mama.
- Grendel vaguely realizes the snakes are there to guard something. What do you think that might be?
- Though he knows nothing of himself or his strength and powers, Grendel works up the nerve to dive through the firesnake pool and see what's on the other side. He realizes that the snakes swerve away from him, as if his skin is charmed.
- Grendel pokes his head above the waters and sees the world of men for the first time. He goes no further on this first night.
- Grendel learns more about his surroundings and his identity. There are all these creepy, glowing eyes and large shapes that live in his cave. No worries, though—they're not really watching him. They're looking through him.
- Wait, is that better?
- Looks like it: only Grendel's Mama really sees him. Only Mama really loves him. Okay, she never says anything, but whatever: Grendel understands that she loves him because he is her own creation, and he's like her. Issues? More like ISSUES.
- But there's a complication. Mama's staring at him doesn't always give Grendel the warm fuzzies. Sometimes it makes him self-conscious and leaves him feeling ugly and icky, as if he peed on his fur.
- Fits of crying ensue. Grendel looks to Mama for comfort and mostly gets it, but things are changing. He doesn't understand his discomfort and sorrow. He begins stalking around the world above—but doing no real harm to anything.
- Then it happens. One morning, baby Grendel has an accident that changes his whole worldview. Yes: he gets his foot stuck in a tree.
- Grendel bellows for Mama's help, but nothing happens. He even cries out to the sky.
- We know how that works out.
- Grendel suffers from blood loss and horrific pain, and he begins to pity himself for dying alone, unloved, and unmissed.
- Daylight comes, and still no Mama. He searches the landscape for her and finds that nature is cruel because it's full of objects (rocks, trees) that look like her but aren't.
- Because she's not there, Grendel can't make sense of the sunlit world.
- Okay, so Mama doesn't come, but a bull sure does, and this bull is totally angry.
- The bull gets real. It's totally going to charge.
- Grendel thinks about how unfair this is. After all, if he were free, he could take the bull apart with his bare hands.
- The first charge of the bull hits low on the tree, and the tip of his horn gores Grendel's leg to the knee.
- Grendel realizes that the bull is an unthinking brute of nature and will never hit any higher up the tree. The bull isn't going to get him. The only thing he has to fear is that horn.
- At this point, our monster is in pretty bad shape: he's bleeding, numb from the ankle up and feeling pretty bitter that Mama hasn't come to save him.
- Stuck up in the tree, Grendel has an epiphany: only he exists. Not the world, not those creepy shapes in the cave, just him.
- We hate to break it to you, Grendel...
- Anyway, Grendel's come up with a big theory: he thinks that he's the only thing that really exists, and everything else is either something pushing him or something he's pushing against. Okay, then: all this dude needs now is a MySpace account, and he'll be good to go.
- Grendel falls into sleep or unconsciousness as the bull keeps charging. At some point, the bull gives up and goes away.
- But something else appears. Grendel is about to have his first encounter with men.
- In his stupor, Grendel makes a startling discovery: men speak the same language he does, only it sounds a little different.
- We get a description of what men look like to Grendel: small, weak, dead-eyed. They look like him, he says, only ridiculous.
- The dialogue that follows proves this.
- The men are surveying the broken tree and the "thing" inside it. They are clueless.
- What is the creature? Independent of the tree? A "beast-like fungus"?
- Yes, boys. Grendel is totally a beast-like fungus. What is this, amateur hour?
- Whatever big bad G is, the problem is apparent: the tree can't live with something like that in it.
- The men determine that the tree is "a goner," and they say they can't leave it to rot. You know what will happen to the value of the neighborhood if you let the landscape go, right?
- One of the men (he turns out to be King Hrothgar) pitches another possibility: maybe this thing is an oak-tree spirit? Should they chop it out or leave it alone?
- One of Hrothgar's men determines that whatever it is, it's definitely hungry. Grendel is super happy when the man decides that the monster would like pig.
- Then Grendel makes a huge mistake: he laughs in his joy over the pig.
- Now the men think he is angry. They think this is why Grendel is "killing the tree."
- The pig-man thinks it's because he wants pig. How close they are to understanding, and yet how far!
- Grendel tries to help them out by screaming, "Pig!" Guess how well that works?
- The horses are frightened and King Hrothgar hurls his ax at Grendel.
- The axes slices Grendel's shoulder a bit and adds to his misery.
- Grendel, hairy and beastlike as he is, makes a great assessment: "You're all crazy!" he yells.
- Things escalate quickly. Hrothgar moves to surround Grendel.
- Grendel makes a frightening observation. Men are not like the bull, and they're not like the doe or that ram way back at the beginning. Nope: men can actually think and plan. That makes them dangerous.
- The men begin to shoot arrows and throw javelins at Grendel, who is helpless to defend himself. He howls more loudly than ever.
- At that moment, Mama appears—and she is one unhappy monster.
- Mama comes "screaming like a thousand hurricanes," and the men get on their horses and gallop away.
- Mama plows down the tree—seriously, just like that—and hurries Grendel back home. He loses consciousness and wakes up back in his cave.
- The creepy shapes that used to occupy all the nooks and crannies of the cave have retreated. Maybe they smell man on Grendel?
- Grendel attempts to share his experience with Mama, but who is he kidding? She lost the use of language long ago, and she's distressed by his desire to talk.
- Grendel tries to explain his new "resistance theory" to her: "I exist, nothing else."
- Grendel's Mama rushes at him and squashes him in a bear hug.
- Grendel tries out his new theory by describing her into existence: "My mother smells of wild pig and fish." He's trying to make his mother smell like wild pig and fish just by saying that she smells like wild pig and fish.
- Yeah, not so much. Try again, Grendel.
- So maybe, Grendel thinks, he's not the one who observes and creates. Maybe he's just a total lack, a great big nothing, just the all the other object around him. Strike one blow for identity.
- Grendel tries to claw his way free of Mama's embrace, but he can't escape the beating of her heart all around him.