Free Grendel Essays: Social Commentary :: Grendel Essays

Authors often have to choose between concentrating on either plot or social commentary when writing their novels in John Gardeners Grendel, the plot becomes is a secondary consideration.   Grendels exploits provide the reader with a clear understanding of the strong opinions the author carries and substructure be seen clearly as a narrative supporting nihilism in its many forms. The reader easily perceives the blatant religious subtext in the guise of dapple priests and the foolish creditful. The notion of the old being wise is unacceptable to Gardener along with any notion of hero idolization. Within his novel, Gardner expresses his views concerning religion, wisdom and nature. Religion plays a large role in Grendel. Priests do not want to perform their services without the proper payment, which, in turn, allows the rich the most access to religion and God. The citizens of the village atomic number 18 also confusingly polytheistic and monotheistic. When praying to their king god does not decrease the frequency of Grendels visits, they retreat to begging any god of which they have known for help. This reveals their faith to be not faith at all but rather faith that will remain faith as long as it can be turn up. A proven religious faith is contradictory term, for it can only be placed in a religion that cannot be proven lest it is true faith no longer. Grendels interludes with the dragon portray, at their onsets, the dragon as a worldly, wise creature with much to share. The dragon haughtily informs Grendel close his extensive store of knowledge as he teases him with how much he knows. As Grendels interests are piqued, the dragon expends the cumulative result of his travails Know how much youve got, and beware of strangersMy advice to you, my waste friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it (Gardner page ). Although the dragon serves as a vessel to point out the necessity of Grendel and makes some pointed observations about mankind, all his resp ectability is lost with those two short sentences. The author is making an observation about materialism and the falsehood of wisdom always accompanying age. by and by all his years of intense scrutiny, the dragon can only grasp from human- and animalkind alike that possessions are the key to lifes existence. Nature against society is also discussed in Grendel. The event that citizens surrounded with religion and social status could be so easily overtaken by nature (Grendel) gives a sense of irony to the reader.