Gardner's Use Of Order And Chaos In Grendel

John Gardner's Grendel provides a fascinating penetration into the ineluctable mystery of order and chaos, good and evil, hero and monster, claiming throughout a place for the monster's point of view. Order and chaos can be shown how Grendel causes chaos for his own entertainment whereas the humans try to kill him calm the chaos down and good and evil can also be shown how Grendel views the human’s actions and how the humans view themselves compared to Grendel. The hero and monster reference can be found when Unferth tried to kill Grendel, declaring himself a hero to the land.

In Chapter six page seventy-six, Grendel admits he creates chaos for his own pleasure. “I killed straggles now and then- with a certain grim pleasure very different from that which I got from cracking a cow’s skull.” After attacking the hall for the first time, Grendel began to feel joy in himself for causing a raid against the humans. From the raids, the humans are desperate to set order back into their land because with unexpected death occurring throughout the land can hurt how their land functions. For instance, if the bread maker dies unexpectedly and no one else in the land knows how to make bread, it may cause an increase in hunger through the land. They tried to get order by sending Unferth to kill Grendel. However, Grendel wait for him to fall asleep to carry

For instance, in chapter four, Grendel talks about how “innocently” the humans are enjoying themselves at a party, when he finds a dead man’s body throat that had been slit and his clothes had been stolen. The humans may think that everybody around them, which are humans, are on the good side of the world, whereas humans can commit the same violence crime. The reason they refer to Grendel as a monster in their land is to compare themselves to Grendel and appearing to be more civilized, having morals, and blameless for their actions compared to