Grendel Notes

The othering -differentiate yourself from others to understand self -attracted or repulsion -opposites attract -horror comes from anything not normal Own your face Robert TED talk -“The doe in the clearing goes stiff at sight of my horridness, then remembers her legs and is gone” -Bawl -So upset that even a doe is afraid of him -Maybe we need to chop the fungus out -we need to cut it out -Need to fix -wrong -Grendle others himself? - reacting to how he is better than everyone Grendle Chapter 1 notes -Why does Grendle want the ram to leave? -why does the ram stay? Is it friendly? Or just Stupid - “the season is upon us” (5) - Season of violence - “And so begins the twelfth year of my idiotic war” (5) - Almost like a routine -Happens every year “why can’t these creatures discover a little dignity?” (6) -No purpose in life? -like a bystander? -Repetition of the word “brain” -Knowledge excites him? -hates anything that is “brainless” “Him, too I hate, the same as I hate those brainless budding trees, these brattling birds” (6) -The sky - Hates anything that can’t think and express their ideas? “ Not, of course, that I fool myself with thoughts that I am more noble. Pointless, ridiculous monster crouched in the shadows, stinking of dead men, murdered children, martyred. ( I am neither proud nor ashamed, understand.)” (6) -- how he views self - Neither proud nor ashamed, but he understood where he stood in life? - knew his purpose? “It was not always like this, of course. On occasion it’s been worse” ( 7) -The sky - The sky reflects upon his mood? “they see all life without observing it” ( 8) use of shadow -states that this is the only friend and comfort this world affords -lonely? “ I feel my anger coming back, building up like invisible fire, and at last when my soul can non longer resist, I go up, fists clenched, against my lack of will, my belly growling, mindless as wind, for blood” (9) Motivation “the world is abandoned” (9) Humanity being taken away?f Innocence ? “So childhood too feels good at first, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age. ( 9) -Maybe why he hates the world, everything is the same? -Childhood feels good at first- because there’s so much exploring to do? “ I am terrified of my own loud voice in the darkness” (10) - he doesn’t think of himself as something scary - is surprised of how loud he is -unaware of self and abilities -doesn’t want to be a monster “ my pale slightly glowing fat mother sleeps on, sick at heart” ( 11) “she must have some human in her”(11) “She clutches at me in her sleep as if to crush me” (11) Ability to feel guilt “she never speaks” -Because she has nothing to say? Or just avoiding conversation “A respected guest” -refers to himself in Hrothgar’s meadhall “in the darkness, I alone see clear as day” ( 12) -Darkness is where he belongs -ram symbolizes him -tender grasses peek up, innocent yellow, through the ground -innocent death? - Mother is sick at heart -Grendle wants to die? CHAPTER 2 Cave- Yonic imagery Flashback to when he first discovered the world? “I would scheme with or stalk my imaginary friends, projecting the self I mean to become into every dark corner of the cave and the woods above” ( 17) -Projecting the self I mean to become- Grendle isn’t who he wants to be? -he wants to be seen differently? -“Poor Grendel will hang here and starve to death, I told myself and no one will ever even miss him” -third person - “I seem to see the whole universe even the sun and sky, leaping forward, then sinking away again, decomposing” (19) -“If she were there, the cliffs, the brightening sky, the trees, the stag, the waterfall would suddenly snap into position around her sane again, well organized; but she was not, and the morning was crazy.” (19) -Maybe he sees the world differently with her mother “ He could slam me right out of the tree with one blow of that boned, square hear, maybe tearing the food off, and then he could gore me to death at his leisure in the grass.” ( 21) -“ He fought by instinct, blind mechanism ages old” (21) “I twisted to search the cliff walls again, but still my mother wasn’t there, and laughter grew fierce.” (21) -“I understood the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impost our hopes and fears” ( 22) “ I was, in her eyes, some meaning I myself could never know and might not care to know: an alien, the rock broken free of the wall.” (23) “It was my language, but spoken in a strange way” (23) “Suddenly I knew I was dealing with no dull mechanical bull but with thinking creatures, pattern makers, the most dangerous things I’d ever met” (27) “The world is a pointless accident” (28) “I Observe myself observing what I observe” (29) Chapter 3 -“In time, I began to be more amused than revolted by what they threatened”( 32) -Amused? -“It was slightly ominous because of its strangeness but I half believed they weren’t serious” (32) - “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” ( 36) -Grendle realizes that he is somehow related to humans as they speak the same language, but at the same time, he didn’t care for them “I was sickened, if only at the waste of it: all they killed- cows, horses, men - they left to rot or burn” ( 36) -If he is sickened, why does he keep staying -“With luck, I might see, on a soft summer night, as many as three halls burning down at once” (37) -wanted to see the halls burn down? “there was nothing to stop the advance of men” ( 40) - “he knew his art. He was the king of the Shapers” (42) -Harper “Thus, I fled, ridiculous hairy creature torn apart by poetry (44) CHAPTER 4: “There will be others this year, they know; yet they hang on” (46) -if the Shaper’s vision of goodness and peace was a part of him, then no one understood him at all, not even Hrothgar (53) -Our stories are us -If you can change your story, you can change Chapter 5: -“Now you know how they feel when they see you” (59) -“It was one thing to eat one from time to time-that was only natural, but it was another to thing to scare them, give them heart attacks, fill their night with nightmares, just for sport (61) -I know everything you see, the beginning, the present, the end. Everything (62) - You now, you see the past and present, like other low creatures: no higher faculties than memory and perception, but dragons have a different kind of mind ( 62) -Dragon laughs, maybe Grendel forgot his past and met the dragon before? -we never got to see how he met the dragon Chapter 7: -there is no limit to desire but desire’s need (Grendel’s law) - I could finish them off in a single night, yet I hold back. What will we call Hrothgar-Wrecker when Hrothgar has been wrecked ( 91) - both has to exist -Balance is everything (91)