Grendel Psychoanalytic Analysis

Psychoanalysis is the way the mind investigates itself through consciousness and unconsciousness by bringing repressed fears and conflicts into the conscious mind. It brings better understanding to what shapes our personalities and why people are who they are. Grendel is just like everyone else, the way he grew up influences who he is. By looking through a psychological perspective we can get a better understanding of Grendel by observing him through Freudianism, object theory, and Neo-Freudianism.
Grendel is seen as a monster that terrorizes the village in the eyes of the people. He doesn’t fit into their society and has no way of knowing how to fit in. He has no companion, except his mom, and was prone to anger and indiscriminate violence.

Language plays a big role in this theory because it’s a key factor on how we interact with one another. Growing up Grendel would watch the way the men would talk to each other and started to puzzle together words with objects. He didn’t necessarily know the meaning of everything they said, but for the most part he did understand them because they spoke his “own language, but in a strange way” (Gardner 23). When Grendel first encounters Hrothgar and the men, he tries speaking to them, but because they don’t understand him they believe he is a threat and Hrothgrar throws the battle-ax at him. This is one of the moments Grendel realizes that these people believed he was a monster. The way they treated him affected his personality to be more aggressive and to put up a wall when it came to humans. He had, however, tried to “befriend the exile” on other occasions, but “they were treacherous and in the end [he] had to eat them” (Gardner 33). Grendel knew the appropriate way to interact with people because he had watched them all these years. He had learned from them the way he should react in certain situations and knew you had to be friendly in order to make friends, but in the end, not being able to communicate was the biggest