Grendel Discssion

Grendel's progression throughout John Gardner's novel Grendel is that of an increasingly evil character. During Grendel's childhood, he was innocent and had not killed anyone. Yet, as soon as he started maturing and venturing out of the cave he was in a fight with humans. Although this is a traumatic incident where Grendel was attacked by humans unprovoked it does not excuse Grendel from purposely continuing to kill humans. Later on Grendel had met the wise old sharper that had told a story about Cain and Abel, through the story Grendel had matured , because he had realized that he descends from Cain and is always on the side of evil. After, Grendel has matured he had met a red dragon and had lost his conscience after the meeting with the dragon. The red dragon told Grendel that there was no reason to stop scaring humans and that it is fine to continue to scare them. Through the dragon's words Grendel matured into an evil monster with no conscience. The dragon out a charm on Grendel that made him impossible to injure from normal humans and this had led Grendel to continue his onslaught on the humans without much worry. Grendel started waging war against Hrothgar and the Danes; what started as an accidental confrontation between the monster and the humans soon turned into a war. Even people that were frightened and helpless were killed for sport and pleasure. Grendel ate many humans, but the humans always gave him an upset stomach, which shows that he does not kill humans for food, but for the pleasure of seeing them frightened. When Beowulf and the Geats had come to help the Danes out, Grendel was overjoyed, because he figured that he had more people to kill. Grendel had progressively become more and more evil as he matured, and even killed people on the day of his death. He had died after he had waged his twelfth and final war on the humans. He was descended from Cain, which is very significant, because it signifies that Grendel's cursed by God and inclined to homicide like his ancestor. As he's naturally at odds with Christian civilization, whoever opposes or destroys him would be sanctified. Although Grendel came from evil origins, he was not evil when he was younger, he had progressively turned evil after battling humans and hearing the words of the wise old sharper and the wise old red dragon.