Grendel, by John Gardner is a novel in which the glorified, anonymously written, Anglo-Saxon saga, Beowulf is told anew for a modern audience nearly one-thousand years later. Concurrent themes of symbolic good, symbolic evil and the intent of the author are found in both works, but are presented differently in each. Both pagan fate and Christian values and teachings are present as tools used to create the three main themes and are woven throughout both works.

The symbolism of good is used in both Grendel and Beowulf. In Beowulf good is defined through the Bible and through comparison to God in the character Beowulf, whereas in Grendel, Beowulf is more arrogant and lucky, given power thorough fate, than supreme and godly. Within the poem, Beowulf, there is the protagonist, Beowulf and the antagonist, Grendel. Beowulf is the superhuman goodness in the story. He is a Christian ideal, empowered by his belief in God when he "Remembered his mighty strength,/ the gift that the Lord had so largely bestowed on him,/ and putting his faith in the favour of the almighty/ and his aid and comfort, he overcame the foe..." (Beowulf 91) In Beowulf, his superior ability to place his faith in God is that which models Christian teachings, whereas in Grendel, Grendel eavesdrops on a Mead Hall conversation about the Geat Hero slaying 'the beast' when the room falls silent and he believes the Geat warrior to be crazy. "Now the Danes weren't laughing. The stranger said it all so calmly, so softly, that it was impossible to laugh. He believed every word he said. I understood at last the look in his eyes. He was insane." (Gardner 142) In both Beowulf and Grendel Beowulf has an extreme confidence that he can kill Grendel. This arrogance is present in Beowulf : "I'll show him Geatish/ strength and stubbornness shortly enough now,/ a lesson in war." (Beowulf 70) In the poem, Beowulf's strength and goodness of faith are only eclipsed by his amazing deeds by first killing Grendel, then killing the beast's mother who comes to seek her revenge, and finally slaying the diabolical Dragon. In Beowulf, God is on the warrior's side and his faith in his God protects and gives him the power to destroy all those opposed to the Lord and to his rulers on earth. In Grendel, as the monster scrutinizes the Geat hero who is talking about all of the battles he has braved and the oceans he has swum, he realizes that "His mouth did not seem to move with his words..." (Gardner 143) When Grendel's mother attempts to avenge the death of her son, Beowulf, the symbol of Biblical good, defies the laws of nature and descends to her lair beneath the mere to kill her. Her death, was possible only due to Beowulf's faith in God. Her demise was met with a Biblical light and the rejoicing of the people, "Light glowed out and illumined the chamber/with a clearness such as the candle of heaven sheds in the sky." (Beowulf 100). This clearly demonstrates the symbolic holiness of Beowulf in his triumph over evil and in the goodness of his deeds and his unfaltering ability to respond to people in need.

To fully show Beowulf as a symbol of good through Christianity, he is comparable to the central figure in any Christian teaching, Jesus Christ. (Clark 16) Though throughout Beowulf, Jesus Christ, the cornerstone of the Christian faith, is not mentioned directly, God the Father is. The closest thing to God within the poem is Beowulf, and he may be likened to God's son on Earth. Like Jesus, Beowulf, the good, crusades against evil, particularly the evil of the three monsters which "...strongly suggested the struggle of good against evil, the process of conversion and salvation, and the life and death of Christ." (Clark 16) His journey to Hrothgar's kingdom is well received in Beowulf In fact, Beowulf's character can be defined as Christ by recognizing "...features of the Christian savior in the destroyer of the hellish fiends [Beowulf] the warrior brave and gentle, blameless in thought and deed, the king who dies for his people." (Clark 15) Like Christ, Beowulf comes to Hrothgar to perform a "miracle" by ridding the kingdom of Grendel and later his mother. Beowulf is truly a goodness sent from God to a foreign kingdom.

Once he returns to Geatland, near the end of his battle for justice and light, he puts himself yet again into the hands of God and challenges the dragon that is terrorizing his own kingdom. The comparison to Christ is obvious again. Beowulf, loyal ruler and brave warrior, is then forsaken by his people, who believe he will fail. His "...band of picked companions did not come/ to stand about him, as battle-usage asks/ offspring of athelings; they escaped to the wood, saved their lives." (Beowulf 133) As Jesus centuries before him, Beowulf is betrayed by his own 'apostles'. He is left to slay the dragon alone, until Wiglaf, a relation to Beowulf , sees his distress and helps him. Beowulf, now old and weaker than in his early days of glory, receives a mortal wound as he and Wiglaf kill the dragon. Being the true and constant symbol of God, and bearing a startling comparison to Jesus Christ, Beowulf commands himself into the arms of the Lord:

Beowulf, to Jesus Christ is the best way to demonstrate Beowulf's extreme symbolism as an implement of good in the theme of Christian ideals. To an Anglo-Saxon audience taught by stories, the message would be clearly one that models the ideals of Christianity and teaches while retaining its entertaining nature.

Beowulf kills the evil monster in both stories, but it is unclear who is the evil being as the lines between good and evil blur from the poem Beowulf to the novel Grendel. Beowulf takes "...the problem of evil and attempts to justify God's rule to a Christian audience..." (Clark 15) In contrast to that, in the story of Grendel, "...the monster's viewpoint makes all the difference. We never forget it is a gimmick, but the odd angle of vision enables Gardner to take full possession of his subject and remold his source almost beyond recognition." (Dickstein 4) The symbolism of evil is present in both Grendel and Beowulf but is seen much reversed due to its vantage point. Grendel is a first person narrative differing greatly from Beowulf's human narrator figure who seems to favor the good of Beowulf rather than the silent undefined bad of Grendel. Grendel's evil is undeniable in the two works, but its severity differs which is similar to Beowulf's godly goodness in Beowulf and pompous and self-serving behavior in Grendel. Grendel is told from evil, from Grendel, who in the epic, Beowulf was simply a monster used as a literary tool so as to develop the Geat hero. In the book Grendel, Grendel is seen as a victim of circumstance and fate rather than a monster of unnecessary evil. Even in his terror and cruelty, he is sort of a reluctant evil, only destroying to gain some sort of feeling of justice by "... destroying him [Hrothgar] ...slowly and cruelly" (Gardner 25) Grendel, "...In addition to being the narrator, is the most sympathetic figure in Grendel-in spite of his outrageous behavior and often deplorable opinions." (Bateson 16-17) The reader sides with and see bits of himself in the character Grendel in the novel Grendel. In Beowulf, Grendel destroys Heorot, Hrothgar's court, not to gain justice, but merely because he must fight the Christian principles upon which Heorot is based. Grendel rises

The monster in Beowulf is angry because Heorot is the 'light' and he is the 'dark'.

Dark is construed as sin and Grendel originates from sin. "This unhappy being/had long lived in the land of monsters/ since the Creator cast them out/as kindred of Cain. For that killing of Abel/ the eternal Lord took vengeance..." (Beowulf 54) The Biblical allusion is to the story of Cain and Abel, the offspring of Adam and Eve. Cain killed his younger brother, Abel, out of jealousy that the Lord accepted Abel's offering of blood and not his own. This sin branded Cain and his kindred as evil. It marked "Grendel stalking; God's brand was on him" (Beowulf 73) It is from the evil of Cain which Grendel comes; the fate of his ancestry betrays him.

In Grendel, the absurdity of ancestral sin is said to be: "... a cold blooded lie that a God had willingly made the world and set out the sun and moon as lights to land-dwellers, that brothers had fought and one of the races saved, the other cursed." (Gardner 47) Grendel is continuously judged and hurt by "...blind prejudice...the unfairness of everything..." (Gardner 3) While Cain's crime of fratricide has forever been the archetype of sin and evil, Grendel's sin is never fully clarified. His sin is rarely questioned, only confirmed. Cain's motivation was that God had "....failed to have even the consistency of ordinary men. Cain, realizing the absurdity of the world, rebels; raging, he kills his brother." (Shorris 90-92) In this light, it is God's fault and not Cain's in killing his brother, just as, it is not Grendel's fault for killing the people of Hrothgar's court. Grendel, as a child of Cain is "...staggering through life, stinking and groaning under the burden of primordial guilt knowing that they must overcome both themselves and their fate." (Shorris 90-92) The presence of two Biblical allusions, Cain and Christ, in the poem Beowulf, is meant to delineate, in terms of the Christian faith, the true evil of the monster Grendel, and to force a comparison between his devilish evil and Beowulf's Godly good as is present through his heroic comparison to Jesus Christ. By contrast, the Biblical element in the book Grendel is meant to sabotage the concept of Grendel's evil, therefore making him the one character with which the reader can identify.

This places fate again against Christian Ideals. The definition of the evil of Grendel has to do with fate and his actions, as well as the will of god and Christian ideals. "Weird has swept them/into the power of Grendel. Yet God could easily/ check the ravages of this reckless fiend" (Beowulf 66) This places the pagan belief in fate against the power and omnipotence of God. Where before it was clear that God's love could serve as protection for the thanes against Grendel, is Grendel now a more aggressive fiend? Has Grendel become so powerful that even God can not stop or hinder the damage he causes? The answer is no. The poem needs an evil monster who is unexplainable in his terror and seemingly unstoppable, Grendel. Such powerful evil gives the protagonist, Beowulf, the ability to show his humanity with which the audience can identify, and somehow retain a mystifying godliness. As well as possessing a symbolic biblical kind of goodness, the poet most certainly tried to make Beowulf enjoyable by "...skillfully revealing the traces of Grendel in Beowulf, the poet held up to his audience a mirror in which they might view the traces of Beowulf in themselves." (Clark 14) This very idea of being able to identify with God as a person in the Christian faith is present in the Bible. In Genesis, 1:26-27 God says "...Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness..." The Anglo-Saxon audience was called upon to see themselves and to see the Christian ideal through Beowulf, the symbol of God and Christian ideals in the story. Thus, the audience heard that God and Christian values were more powerful than any evil.

Along with Christianity being a theme in different aspects in both Beowulf and Grendel, so is fate. In Beowulf it is the forces of fate, or weird, that power Grendel to kill such a kingdom as Hrothgar's. As well as fate powering Grendel in Beowulf, it is the lack of favor that the people of Hrothgar have in God's eyes that cause them to be targeted by a beast. In Grendel, fate, rather than god, controls the majority of what happens. Fate is what gives Grendel his purpose in life, and Grendel becomes evil through questioning it of his mother. "Why do we stand in this putrid, stinking hole?" (Gardner 6) Fate in Grendel is most clear in the monster's death. He dies when the "geat hero" who comes to kill him and end his evil, rips his arm off. Grendel flees to the woods and John Gardner says that he to write this scene he was "...following Grendel in my imagination, trying to feel in myself what it might be like to flee through the deep woods, bleeding to death..." (Hendersen 108) Grendel's death is the clearest example of fate, the "geat hero" hid while he massacred the hall and took Grendel by surprise by grabbing his arm and pulling him down. As Grendel, strong and vicious went to kick the hero, he slipped, and the hero tore his arm off in "...Blind mindless mechanical, mere logic of chance..." (Gardner 152) So Grendel dies whispering "Poor Grendel's had an accident...so may you all."(Gardner 152) What John Gardner couldn't have known when he wrote this book in 1971, was that 11 years later he would be killed in a motorcycle accident, (Hendersen 1) a true demonstration of grisly fate in our modern lives.

In the book Grendel, Grendel, due to his fate as evil, has a supreme omnipotence over the ordinary humans and although it is not a holy omnipotence in the classic sense, he sees the truth and is enlightened. In theory, this situation should be reversed, it should be the good and normal creatures who are informed and enlightened and the evil creatures who know nothing and are forced to rely on their bad instincts to perpetuate their existence. This is not the case in Grendel, but is a main theme in Beowulf. "In the black nights/ he camped in the hall, under Heorot's gold roof;/ yet he could not touch the treasure-throne/ against the lord's will, whose love was unknown to him." (Beowulf 56) Grendel is portrayed as a mute evil in Beowulf, a monster that either attacks or is merciful due to the wishes of a superior being, he is an implement of God. In Grendel, it is he who makes the decisions, the choices to kill, at least most of the time. Grendel has the ability to see God's existence as a truth, or he can see the world as : "...a mechanical chaos of brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears." (Gardner16) The latter is how he chooses to view the world after he converses with the dragon about God:

Thus the reversal of values reverses stereotypes and Grendel dismisses the Christian ideal .

In addition to Grendel being informed and intelligent in the novel Grendel, so is the Dragon. Again, what appears to be merely a mass of uneducated evil is truly the intelligent force of the story. Grendel comes to his lair after being scorned by the humans and the Dragon explains how things work for the truly evil, "...The essence of life is to be found in the frustrations of an established order. The universe refuses the deadening influence of complete conformity." (Gardner 58) Exasperated that Grendel doesn't understand, the Dragon continues to say "...An angry man does not usually shake his fist at the universe in general. He makes a selection and knocks his neighbor down." (Gardner 59) This is a far cry from Christianity's golden rule of "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." (Bible Luke 10:27-28) a rule that runs throughout Beowulf in the symbolism of the main characters. In Grendel, Christian values are more of a satirical purpose of the author, to show all of Christianity's contradictions in the story of Beowulf. Grendel and the Dragon, although evil, are so entirely cast down upon in society purely due to the humans' 'right' as 'superior beings' to take something different and, in dire need of a reason to rebel, hurt and kill this living thing. The humans are fake and hypocritical. They pray to their god on their holy days and the remainder of the week they are the people they truly are; unreligious and misguided. The tribes are miraculously filled with faith one moment and drained of it the next. An example of this occurs when a priest named Ork sees Grendel and believes him to be the "Great Destroyer". The priests join Ork in the dark town after his encounter wherein he has just explained to the great destroyer his theological views and Grendel, playing along, has nodded to them, acknowledging them as true. The priests, god's representatives on earth, the people who are supposed to possess the most faith, denounce Ork. What is more unsettling than this bold contradiction is the fact that they tell him he is a "...blamed fool. If a man hankers for visions, he should do it in public where it does us some good." (Gardner 116) In Grendel it is easier to like the true and intelligent evil rather than the false goodness of the arrogant and ignorant humans.

In Beowulf, the line between good and evil is unmistakable, due to the extreme symbolism of the two main characters and their respective concepts of good and evil. In Grendel, the line is blurred and both characters can be seen as good and evil. In both works, good is needed to define evil and vice a versa. This line between good and evil is sharpened in Beowulf with the biblical allusions and weakened in Grendel through the ability of the evil characters to see through the fake goodness of the humans. In Beowulf, the humans are the only characters with the ability to talk and reason, but this quality is passed on to all beings in the novel, Grendel. In Beowulf, contradictory to the definition of good and evil, Christian ideals have lessened importance to Hrothgar's people as they had pursued pleasure and neglected to live by God's laws. Grendel is particularly evil, but the people being ravaged by Grendel 'deserved' such terror because of their own lack of faith in God. They are the human element of the story; the characters who demonstrate fate. Grendel is granted the power to kill Hrothgar's thanes through fate or "weird" (the old English word for fate) (Webster 1511), through the will of God, and because of the immoral behavior of his victims. His victims are susceptible to his torture because of their "practice,/ a heathen hope; Hell possessed/their hearts and minds: the Maker was unknown to them." (Beowulf 56) This clash between fate and God goes back to the aforementioned struggle between rooted pagan and newer Christian ideals of Anglo-Saxon England and the purpose of the Beowulf poet in his attempt to combine these two separate themes. The line between good and evil in Beowulf is a stark one sharply separating these concepts.

As in both stories, Grendel defines the good people through his evil fate. This phenomenon is explained by the sage yet evil Dragon:

In Beowulf , the godliness of Beowulf would never exist without the absolute devilishness of Grendel. Evil is shown in both works as a symbolic theme. It defines characters directly and indirectly and both transcends and fits all popular beliefs. Evil is a normal part of everyday in the present time when Grendel was written and in a past time when Beowulf was written. This duality of evil makes it a topic used by authors to demonstrate their intent.

The intentions of the Beowulf poet and of John Gardner, in Grendel were contrary to each other. John Gardner wrote Grendel to be a bold statement and a satirical piece of literature, but disguised it under the historical, fairly safe, work of Beowulf. The Beowulf poet was probably a scop, or storyteller who went place to place spinning tales for lodging and food. (Irving 1) As a scop, it was suspected that she or he told the poem to be entertain rather than to have a higher purpose. It was not until around the year one thousand A. D. when the poem was recorded, that religious undertones were put in to aid in the spread of Christianity. (Irving 5) Grendel is a "...dazzling revision of the Beowulf story that injects nightmare into the complacencies of our cultural and historical self-imaginings..." ( ) In addition to pointing out modern culture's flaws, Grendel has the intent of social satire that comes largely from the tumultuous times it which it was written, for America and for its author, John Gardner. Grendel's cynicism is well founded after a life as a monster experienced largely through the way that humans look at him and through the way he looks at humans. His despondency leads the reader to experience his own repulsion towards humans and identify with some of his own hatreds . In the words of Grendel,

This is a satirical view on Anglo-Saxon society that reveals Gardner's feelings about organized religion.

Gardner uses Grendel's attitude towards life as a reflection of Gardner's own struggles within his life. His first marriage was breaking up and at the same time, he received an accusation of plagiarism (Hendersen 20) and underwent an operation for intestinal cancer. (Hendersen 154) His writing demonstrates his own deep sadness and personal trauma, which began with the accidental death of Gardner's brother that occurred when Gardner ran him over with a plow he was dragging on a tractor. (Hendersen 151) Grendel was published in 1971; a year when Vietnam was at its peak (Columbia 2887) and civil rights protests were occurring more frequently. (Columbia 565) These events were questioning the actions and beliefs of the United States, similar to the same doubt and satirical view of Anglo-Saxon society within Grendel by Grendel. John Gardner shows the stupidity of our society, as we punish the younger generation for the actions and decisions of the older generation. In his book, this idea is made concrete through Grendel asking why he lives in this "... putrid, stinking hole?" (Gardner 6) He has been condemned through the sins of others; his lineage betrays him. Grendel's condemnation for the crimes of his family is similar to Vietnam and antiwar feelings about the draft and the younger generation fighting an older generation's war. This is a modern statement taking an Old English character and giving him the ability to peacefully protest against a modern evil. In addition to Vietnam, civil rights protests were finally becoming acknowledged as a result of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which prohibited discrimination on account of race, color, religion or national origin. (Columbia 565) In the era in which John Gardner wrote Grendel, many states were still passing equal pay laws and Gay Rights groups were starting to voice their need for equality also. (Columbia 565) These social struggles are similar to the hardships encountered by Grendel. Gardner intends for his audience to identify with his literature and his themes and therefore constructs a parallel.

The Beowulf poet and the people who would later edit the story, unlike John Gardner, had to keep a thematic and symbolic balance between the implication "...of Christian values without repudiating ancestral virtues (Bloom 3) The original story of Beowulf may or may not have had the intent of religious references. Whatever the case of the original story, the modern retellings are replete with Christian ideals, values, and teachings. There is, however, speculation that the poet was, in fact, a "... learned Christian antiquarian" and actually had a concept of the "...heroism and the despair, the nobility and the hopelessness, of that disappearing past" rather than the common belief that the poet was pagan (Clark 11). No matter the orientation of the poet, a conflict between old tradition and new religion existed. This battle between the two antithetical schools of thought probably resolved itself around the year 1000, the year when Beowulf was thought to have been first recorded. (Irving 5) The widely accepted version of the poem, 3182 lines long, is a piece of literature with Biblical allusions and Christian teachings that stress the extreme relationship between good and evil as a value. Whereas in Grendel, the 'line' between good and evil is blurred by the fate and reluctant evil of Grendel, Beowulf's characters are starkly symbolic untouchable goods and evils, blacks and whites, with a balance maintained.

Grendel has a realistic tone and satirical voice while Beowulf was created to serve a purpose and to retain it's fanciful setting and triumphs. As the story was recounted over the centuries the large presence of Christian ideals in Beowulf as a woven theme is greatly due to the majority of the population of Medieval England's being illiterate. This left few people actually able to write down the story. The people who could read and write were generally monks and clergy. The monks "... almost alone preserved learning in the west." (Columbia 1806) The monks and clergy saw the story of Beowulf as an easily changeable story to suit their purpose of spreading Christian ideas to a broader population. (Irving 2) Thus, the present version of Beowulf was born: a story of complex moral and religious stances of Christian teachings and values, and of whimsical fate driven heroism Anglo-Saxon in origin.

John Gardner could have selected any ancient or modern story on which to base his satire. He chose Beowulf. The Beowulf poet had no choice but to use a pagan story to fill with his own values. Each author either found the them of constant good pitted against evil ludicrous or morally true. Gardner took Beowulf and created a satirical and real world which sadly, he lived in. The Beowulf poet needed to entertain and later, to spread a religion and he made the story clearly cut and serious. Both are true in their contrasting ways and depict the closeness between society a millennium ago and society today.

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