Something that disturbs me about John Gardner’s Grendel is that it makes the concepts of
good and evil so indistinguishable from each other that, in the long run,
everything seems very similar. What I
mean is that the main character, Grendel, is partially human and partially beastly.
Therefore, he is a sort of link between what is referred to as the civilized world
and the primal world. He is a character that would usually be labeled as evil,
but because he is so human, it is difficult to just say flat out “Yep. Grendel
is the bad guy.” Furthermore, because he has traits that make him so human but
also so beastly at the same time, it by comparison makes the humans seem
beastly and the beasts seem human.
Foil after foil is created: Grendel to the dragon, the
dragon to the shaper, Grendel to the shaper, the shaper to Wealtheow, Hrothgar
to the shaper, Grendel to Unferth, this one to that one and those guys and the
list could keep going. However, there is one foil that, even though I was able
to recognize it, I’m still not exactly sure how I feel about it.
The dragon and Hrothgar are very similar. At first it struck
me as odd that they should be. After all, Hrothgar is supposedly a “good king”
according to Beowulf. He is the
ring-giving, the symbol of order and unity, the very heart of the Danes. He is the person who originally brought the
Danes together as a brotherhood. The dragon is the complete opposite, being a
nihilist and a loner and probably a little crazy (although that’s arguable). In
black and white terms, the dragon is the evil one and Hrothgar is good, and
that’s all there is too it. However, they are too similar to let their
likenesses go ignored. Both the dragon and the king seek gold and guard it. The
king gathers it in his mead hall and distributes it to his thanes, and the
dragon collects it and counts it. Additionally, both of them have an affinity
for virgins. Hrothgar collects Wealtheow as a sort of war agreement and makes
her the queen, and dragons typically just take them and guard them for no
apparent reason. I don’t really understand the purpose of that, but to each his
own.
Basically, both parties seek to acquire things that really
serve them no purpose. They hoard virtually useless things, and their greed creates
stagnation. The dragon’s greed and lust for virgins and gold is predominantly
why he is associated with evil. Yet Hrothgar is doing the exact same thing.
This is where I am ambivalent. Is the foil of the dragon and
the king to display Hrothgar as evil and beastly, or to display the dragon as
human and good? Or even more likely, it is present to display both as neither
good nor evil? Personally, I think that the foil is to demonstrate that all
men, no matter how “good” they seem, are inherently evil and self-serving, but
even now I can’t be sure that that was the intention. That’s the reason why
this is both my favorite and most hated foil. It compares the king, someone who
supposedly epitomizes good, to the dragon, a creature so indifferent to
creation and destruction that he has to be evil.
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