Grendel's Self Discovery
Joshua George
Self-Discovery/Philosophies
Throughout the novel Grendel goes back and forth between the two beliefs nihilism and existentialisms. Through the journey of figuring out the belief in life, he struggles for being a cultural outsider. Gardner makes it tough for Grendel to make a decision because just like Grendel there are other cultural outsiders like the Dragon who shares his philosophy with him.
Philosophies of life have a wide variety for people to choose from like in Grendel by John Gardner. The main character, Grendel, travels on a journey of self-discovery, eventually becoming a nihilist, and by the hero Beowulf was defeated. Grendel struggles with his own meaning of life between “being” and “nothingness.” With influence from others like the Dragon, Beowulf, and the Queen, Grendel switches between beliefs based off two philosophers named Jean-Paul Sartre and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi.
The philosophy that is existentialism is “a philosophical movement which exercised an influence on many of the arts as well as on philosophy and psychology.” The belief in people have free will and can choose what they want to be is in other words what existentialism. Existentialism was a philosophical movement that dealt with the ideas of the way of life by many philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre did not agree with traditional arguments of human nature he argued that in the case of human beings “existence precedes essence.” In his famous quote, the meaning is that humans have no set or fixed nature that determines what they will do.
After leaving his mother’s cave, he is free to an entirely different world, a world of humans and other creatures, “I played my way farther out into the world… cautiously darting from tree to tree challenging the terrible forced of night on tiptoe.”(16). As a defense against the rest of the universe, Grendel establishes existentialism as his philosophy. Grendel discovers that the creatures that he watches share a common
Self-Discovery/Philosophies
Throughout the novel Grendel goes back and forth between the two beliefs nihilism and existentialisms. Through the journey of figuring out the belief in life, he struggles for being a cultural outsider. Gardner makes it tough for Grendel to make a decision because just like Grendel there are other cultural outsiders like the Dragon who shares his philosophy with him.
Philosophies of life have a wide variety for people to choose from like in Grendel by John Gardner. The main character, Grendel, travels on a journey of self-discovery, eventually becoming a nihilist, and by the hero Beowulf was defeated. Grendel struggles with his own meaning of life between “being” and “nothingness.” With influence from others like the Dragon, Beowulf, and the Queen, Grendel switches between beliefs based off two philosophers named Jean-Paul Sartre and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi.
The philosophy that is existentialism is “a philosophical movement which exercised an influence on many of the arts as well as on philosophy and psychology.” The belief in people have free will and can choose what they want to be is in other words what existentialism. Existentialism was a philosophical movement that dealt with the ideas of the way of life by many philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre did not agree with traditional arguments of human nature he argued that in the case of human beings “existence precedes essence.” In his famous quote, the meaning is that humans have no set or fixed nature that determines what they will do.
After leaving his mother’s cave, he is free to an entirely different world, a world of humans and other creatures, “I played my way farther out into the world… cautiously darting from tree to tree challenging the terrible forced of night on tiptoe.”(16). As a defense against the rest of the universe, Grendel establishes existentialism as his philosophy. Grendel discovers that the creatures that he watches share a common