How we cite our quotes: (Page) Vintage Books, 1989
Quote #1
And so begins the twelfth year of my idiotic war. The pain of it! The stupidity! (5)
It's a hard concept to wrap our heads around: a monster who doesn't love his status as evildoer. This status isolates him from all society and makes everything good and beautiful a torment to him since he can never benefit from them. On top of that, Grendel's ability to analyze his own behavior is no help at all. He knows that neither raging nor snarfing down humans will do anything to ease his pain.
Quote #2
I would feel, all at once, alone and ugly, almost—as if I'd dirtied myself—obscene. The cavern river rumbled far below us. Being young, unable to face these things, I would bawl and hurl myself at my mother and she would reach out her claws and seize me, though I could see I alarmed her (I had teeth like a saw), and she would smash me against her fat, limp breast as if to make me part of her flesh again. (17)
Grendel takes a seat on the psychotherapist's couch, as it were, and shows us what it's like growing up monster. It isn't a pretty childhood. Gardner does a great job "humanizing" Grendel here—and making it a lot harder on us humans to judge his behavior.
Quote #3
Blood gushed from my ankle and shin, and flew up through me like fire up the flue of a mountain. I lost my head. I bellowed for help, so loudly it made the ground shake... I bellowed to the sky, the forest, the cliffs, until I was so weak from the loss of blood I could barely wave my arms. "I'm going to die," I wailed. 'Poor Grendel! Poor old Mama!' I wept and sobbed. "Poor Grendel will hang here and starve to death," I told myself, "and no one will ever even miss him!" The thought enraged me. (18)
Physical pain helps Grendel build a wall between himself and the rest of the natural world—that is, until the dragon charms his hide and makes him invulnerable. If he could have continued to feel pain and fear injury from humans, he might have been a different kind of monster. Would he have been more like humans?
Quote #4
Two nights later I went back. I was addicted. The Shaper was singing the glorious deeds of the dead men, praising war. He sang how they'd fought me. It was all lies. The sly harp rasped like snakes in cattails, glorifying death. I snatched a guard and smashed him on a tree, but my stomach turned at the thought of eating him. (54)
There's no question about it: Grendel suffers physical and psychological pain at the hands (or the voice) of the Shaper. Perhaps it isn't intentional, but the torment Grendel feels when he hears about how great men are and how cursed he is does more damage than the useless swords on his charmed hide. The worst bit is that humans get to make the history—and to change what really happened—in order to glorify their deeds.
Quote #5
My chest was full of pain, my eyes smarted, and I was afraid—O monstrous trick against reason—I was afraid I was about to sob. I wanted to smash things, bring down the night with my howl of rage. But I kept still. She was beautiful, as innocent as dawn on winter hills. She tore me apart as once the Shaper's song had done. (100)
How ironic is it that Grendel is the only creature sensitive to Wealtheow's plight and beauty? (Answer: pretty ironic.) But there is an added dimension to Grendel's misery in the presence of Wealtheow. He feels his ugliness and cursedness fifty times more when she's in the room. In the end, he knows that Wealtheow is way out of his league, and he hates that the miserable humans get to have her.
Quote #6
And so in my cave, coughing from the smoke and clenching feet on fire with chilblains, I ground my teeth on my own absurdity. Whatever their excuse might be, I had none, I knew: I had seen the dragon. Ashes to ashes. And yet I was teased—tortured by the red of her hair and the set of her chin and the white of her shoulders—teased toward disbelief in the dragon's truths. (108)
Wealtheow tortures Grendel in the same way the Shaper does: she's the exception to the rule that defies all of Grendel's ideas about humankind. If only she'd been ugly or harsh, then Grendel wouldn't have to rethink what he's learned from the School of Hard Knocks. You might be tempted to think that any relief from the bitterness and cynicism of the dragon would be welcome. But remember that Grendel got a whole sense of identity from that visit. It's mighty inconvenient to have anyone challenging his hard-won ideas.
Quote #7
She understands too his bitterness at growing old. She even understands—more terrible, no doubt, than all the rest—old Hrothgar's knowledge that peace must be searched through ordeal upon ordeal, with no final prospect but failure. Lesson on lesson they've suffered through, recognizing, more profoundly each time, their indignity, shame, triviality. It will continue. (122)
This sudden insight into Wealtheow's understanding of her bleak situation should give us pause. Wealtheow feels the weight of her own purposeless life—after all, she's married to an old guy who is losing his grip on his kingdom and has brought three doomed sons into the world—and yet she's able to make the rounds of the meadhall as though her efforts matter. And though Gardner points out how these miserable ordeals will continue, we get a pretty strong sense that Wealtheow will, too.
Quote #8
... I too am learning, ordeal by ordeal, my indignity. It's all I have, my only weapon for smashing through these stiff coffin-walls of the world. So I dance in the moonlight, make foul jokes, or labor to shake the foundations of the night with my heaped-up howls of rage. Something is bound to come of all this. I cannot believe such monstrous energy of grief can lead to nothing! (123)
Grendel has a totally different take on the indignity of suffering. It doesn't make him noble or provide any sense of heroism or beauty. He's just not Wealtheow. It does, however, make him feel purposeful. For Grendel, that's a pretty big deal. It helps him push against the dragon's nihilism.
Quote #9
Tedium is the worst pain. The mind lays out the world in blocks, and the hushed blood waits for revenge. (157)
Remember how the whole novel is structured around the signs of the zodiac and the irresistible movement of the seasons? For Grendel, the boredom of his existence, year after year, is the worst kind of torture ever. He has to play the evil guy season after season—and what's worse is that the humans can't really fight back. Grendel is so over the whole thing. It's not much of a surprise that he feels compelled to meet up with crazy Beowulf.
Quote #10
My whole arm's on fire, incredible, searing pain—it's as if his fingers are charged like fangs with poison. I scream, facing him, grotesquely shaking hands—dear long-lost brother, kinsman-thane—and the timbered hall screams back at me. I feel the bones go, ground from their sockets, and I scream again. I am suddenly awake. (169)
The kind of suffering Grendel feels up to this point dulls his senses and makes him crazy with the boredom of it all. But this encounter with Beowulf's grip is something completely different. Now, Grendel is actually convinced there's a world out there beyond his own creation—and it's pretty freaky. The dragon had promised him that total annihilation would come—and that suffering would be pointless—but Grendel had done his best to wiggle out of that reality. Here we can see there's no wiggle room left.