How we cite our quotes: (Page) Vintage Books, 1989
Quote #1
The doe in the clearing goes stiff at the sight of my horridness, then remembers her legs and is gone. It makes me cross. "Blind prejudice!" I bawl at the splintered sunlight where half a second ago she stood. I wring my fingers, put on a long face. "Ah, the unfairness of everything," I say, and shake my head. It is a matter of fact that I have never killed a deer in all my life, and never will. (7-8)
We have to say that we're on the deer's side with this one: Grendel's a scary guy. Still, we have to remember that our monster's endured a lifetime of misunderstanding and disappointment. He's entitled to an outburst or two. Gardner has a way of using this kind of humorous scene to highlight the larger issues of identity and expectation. Grendel doesn't make such a good first impression because, well, he looks like an enormous monster. When anyone reacts badly toward him, then Grendel actually acts like a monster. It's a vicious circle—and we can see here that Grendel won't be breaking out of it anytime soon
Quote #2
It was confusing and frightening, not in a way I could untangle. I was safe in my tree, and the men who fought were nothing to me, except of course that they talked in something akin to my language, which meant that we were, incredibly, related. I was sickened, if only at the waste of it: all they killed—cows, horses, men—they left to rot or burn. (36)
Grendel has many chances to marvel at the senselessness of human behavior. In this instance, the wastefulness of their violence only highlights a sore point for him: somehow, somewhere, they share a common ancestor. And somehow, Grendel was chosen to be the cursed one—even though he never leaves leftovers on his plate.
Quote #3
The harp turned solemn. He told of an ancient feud between two brothers which split all the world between darkness and light. And I, Grendel, was the dark side, he said in effect. The terrible race God cursed. (51)
The Shaper is telling the story of Cain and Abel here in order to establish why there are demons and monsters in the world. In essence, the descendants of Cain (the brother-killer in this story) are cursed as outcasts for the sin of their unknown ancestor. Grendel doesn't know whether or not this story is true, but either way, it's a bum deal. It also leads him to question what kind of deity would curse him to a life of misery for crimes he never committed.
Quote #4
Drunken men rushed me with battle-axes. I sank to my knees, crying, "Friend! Friend!" They hacked at me, yipping like dogs. I held up a body for protection. (52)
Grendel probably hasn't grappled with the term "self-fulfilling prophecy," but that's exactly the kind of unfair thing that's happening here. Grendel has no intention, so he says, of playing the role of monster to the humans' heroes, and yet cornered into it. The ironic hilarity of him holding up a corpse to protect himself is lost on the terrified humans, but we can't miss it. Grendel is striving to make himself understood, but he's using all the wrong signs.
Quote #5
It was a cold-blooded lie that a god had lovingly made the world and set out the sun and moon as lights to land-dwellers, that brothers had fought, that one of the races was saved, the other cursed. Yet he, the old Shaper, might make it true, by the sweetness of his harp, his cunning trickery. (55)
Grendel's powerlessness in the face of humanity is only made worse by the Shaper's version of "history." Sure, he can eat as many humans as he wants, but he's never going to be able to make history tell the truth (that is, tell the story from his point of view). And because humans control history, they also control a big part of Grendel's identity. The whole situation seems unfair. While Grendel's voice is silenced, Hrothgar's clan can determine their own identity and ensure that their version is the official history that gets passed on to future generations.
Quote #6
"Even now you mock me," Unferth whispered. I had an uneasy feeling that he was close to tears. If he wept, I was not sure I could control myself. His pretensions to uncommon glory were one thing. If for even an instant he pretended to misery like mine... (87)
As it turns out, Unferth is truly one miserable dude. But Grendel understands from the beginning that Unferth, unlike himself, actually deserves the misery he has to live with. Grendel is not willing to put up with Unferth's pity party—and certainly not in his own cave. He can't give Hrothgar's disgraced right-hand man the satisfaction of compassion, even in the form of violence, because no mercy has been shown to Grendel himself.
Quote #7
"Worse times are yet to come, my love. / The babes you comfort when they weep / Will soon by birthright have / All these gold rings! Ah, then, then / Your almost-brother love will cool; / The cousin smile must grind out lean / Where younger cousins rule." (116)
Hrothgar's orphaned nephew Hrothulf has a pretty heavy load to carry for a young man. He's lost his father (and therefore his chance at inheriting a kingdom), and now he has to sit at the table with the little kids in the meadhall. The familial tensions run pretty high in this family as Hrothulf babysits the kids that will one day be his sovereign lords. It's a raw deal, but he's not in a position to do anything about it. Yet.
Quote #8
"But satisfy the greed of the majority, and the rest will do you no harm. That's it. You've still got your fiction of consent. If the lowest of the workers start grumbling, claim that the power of the state stands above society, regulating it, moderating it, keeping it within the bounds of order—an impersonal and higher authority of justice. And what if the workers are beyond your reconciliation? Cry 'Law!' Cry 'Common good' and put on the pressure—arrest and execute a few." (118-119)
The anarchist Red Horse quickly finds the perfect place to instill his political theories, right into the impressionable and discontented mind of Hrothulf, Hrothgar's orphaned nephew. Everyone in the meadhall knows that Hrothulf is a problem waiting to happen, since Hrothgar is an old man, and his heirs are far too young to take over the kingdom. We're left to wonder whether or not Hrothulf will swallow Red Horse's Machiavellian hogwash and become a tyrant—or if he'll have a strong enough character to determine for himself what kind of leader he might be.
Quote #9
"The state is an organization of violence, a monopoly in what it is pleased to call legitimate violence. Revolution, my dear prince, is not the substitution of immoral for moral, or of illegitimate for legitimate violence; it is simply the pitting of power against power, where the issue is freedom for the winners and enslavement for the rest." (119)
Red Horse's Political Science 101 lecture series has a rapt audience of one: Hrothulf. The young man doesn't wholly buy into Red Horse's ideas about government, but the fact is, those ideas are out there. These ideas about governance are as brutal as the dragon's ideas about existence, and while some of it may be true, the lack of mercy we see in it makes it once again hard to determine who is kingly and who behaves like a monster.
Quote #10
"If you win, it's by mindless chance. Make no mistake. First you tricked me, and then I slipped. Accident." (171)
We might excuse the soon-to-be-defeated Grendel for this outburst of pre-adolescent whining. He's being beaten at his own game, and that was not supposed to be possible. The dragon charm should have held, but we can see that the dragon's prophecy is winning: Grendel, like everything else on earth, really will die (and for no good reason). Grendel wants to make sure that if he has to die, Beowulf understands that he's nothing special for vanquishing a monster. It's only fair if everyone joins in Grendel's purposeless misery.