Grendel

Grendel’s mother lives in a cave beneath a mere, or a lake, with her son. She is unable to speak, so the reader must rely on Grendel’s descriptions of her for information about her character. It is unclear whether Grendel’s mother was ever able to speak; she may have forgotten or lost her ability to communicate in language, so she makes unintelligible noises when she feels compelled to express herself.

As the years pass, Grendel’s mother transforms from Grendel’s protector, responding to her son’s calls and bounding across the moors to rescue him in Chapter 1, to a confused burden who clings to Grendel when she sleeps and refuses to let him leave the cave in Chapter 11. In Beowulf, Grendel’s mother avenges her son’s death by attacking the meadhall in maternal fury; in Gardner’s novel, she appears sapped of power and weakened by old age, and the narrative does not include her reaction to her son’s death. 

Hrothgar is the king of the Danes, also known as the Scyldings. Grendel’s battle with Hrothgar appears personal, and their conflict began when Grendel was only a child and was trapped in the tree (a recollection Grendel shares in Chapter 2). During this first encounter with humans, Hrothgar and his men attacked Grendel, scared him, and left him by himself to face the night. This rejection ignited the battle that leads to Grendel’s death at the hands of the Stranger.

As a young king, Hrothgar was able to establish himself as a leader of a vast kingdom, leading his men to create a system of roadways that interconnect his communities, allowing for a sense of safety and kinship. Hrothgar’s kingdom prospered until Grendel’s raids on the meadhall frightened and weakened his hold over his people. In the original Beowulf, Hrothgar is a static character, unchanging in his role in the epic poem as a beloved leader of men whose generosity and courage are exemplary; in Grendel, Hrothgar has more human qualities, displaying motivations like self-preservation and emotions like fear.

The Shaper is a harpist and bard, entertaining Hrothgar and his people with imagined stories of the past. His fictions are beautiful and poetic, but untrue. The Shaper occupies a small physical space in the novel; very few details about his person appear. Despite this absence of characterization, the Shaper’s role is significant and his effect on others apparent from his first storytelling session.

When the Shaper first arrived at the meadhall, he displaced the previous Shaper, outdoing him with stories of the Danes that characterize them as true heirs and heroes who are entitled to their prosperity. This story allowed the Danes to understand their world and to make sense of their days, which, in turn, gave the Shaper power. Grendel was taken with the Shaper’s artistic visions, which created a sense of order for Grendel as well as for others who listened to the Shaper.

At the end of the novel, as the Shaper is old and dying, he is revealed to have been engaged in a chaste but beneficial relationship with a married noblewoman in the village. Though nothing untoward appears to have happened between them, the relationship has clearly served the Shaper financially, which suggests that the Shaper has pursued his own cause throughout his life and that he is not just a selfless devotee of Hrothgar.

Grendel’s conversation with the dragon, as he recounts in Chapter 3, marks a significant change in both Grendel’s life and the novel. The tone of their encounter is funny and entertaining, inviting the reader to participate in Grendel’s dawning realization that life is, actually, completely absurd.

The dragon’s power is evident in Grendel’s description of having been summoned to the dragon’s lair. It is unclear how the communication took place, and Grendel simply dropped everything and followed his compulsion, powerless to do otherwise. Such power and reach gave the dragon little satisfaction, however; he was exhausted by all his knowledge and by his understanding of life’s ultimate meaninglessness. Omniscient, prickly, and terrifying, the enormous dragon overwhelmed Grendel with his cynical and fatalistic outlook on existence. Being omniscient, the dragon also foreknew the manner of his own death; the Geat warrior Beowulf will slay him (an event within the narrative of the original epic). However, while Grendel was upset by this foreknowledge, the dragon was completely blasé about it, reinforcing his hard-bitten characterization.