John Gardner's Use Of The Dragon In Grendel

In the novel Grendel, John Gardner depicts the life of the Anglo-Saxon monster Grendel through the monster’s eyes. Grendel is a Sartrean existentialist, and he is skeptical towards his experiences and observations of the civilized world. In his experiences, he encounters an omniscient dragon that bestows a charm of invulnerability on him. Gardner employs the dragon to represent Grendel’s nihilistic tendencies. He demonstrates this through Grendel hearing the Shaper again, raiding the meadhall, and brooding over mankind and Hrothgar, all in which he remembers the dragon’s philosophy.
Gardner uses the dragon to embody Grendel’s nihilistic tendencies when he hears the Shaper after the creatures’ conversation. Before he talked with the dragon, Grendel was enthralled with the Shaper, who “had changed the world, had torn up the past by its thick, gnarled
When Grendel first raids the meadhall, he “[feels] a strange, unearthly joy… as if [he is] born again” (79-80). Grendel feels like raiding the meadhall gave a meaning to his life, and, like the dragon said, he raids the meadhall to “improve” and “stimulate” humans (72). The dragon says that Grendel “[drives humans] to poetry, science, [and] religion” through his raids by helping them recognize “the blunt facts of their mortality,” which is “death” (72-73). Gardner uses the dragon to represent Grendel’s nihilistic feeling of joy upon bringing death and destruction to mankind. Later in his raid, Grendel mocks Unferth, saying “everybody [is] always watching you, weighing you, seeing if you’re still heroic” (84). Grendel mocks Unferth because of his desire to heroically defend his king—his ability to hope. The dragon instilled his nihilistic philosophy into Grendel, and Gardner makes it explicitly clear that the dragon’s influence is prevalent here by saying “the dragon-scent in the room grew stronger”