Grendel is a retelling of the epic poem Beowulf (c. 1000) from its villainous monster’s point of view. It was John Gardner’s best-received and best-selling novel. Gardner explores many philosophical themes within its stream-of-consciousness narrative, and the novel may best be seen not as the clash of hero and monster, but as a clash of visions—the creative artistic vision of the Shaper, who sees the world as ordered and meaningful, and the nihilistic vision of the Dragon, who sees the world as disordered and meaningless. Grendel himself is continually tugged between the alluring power of both visions, yet he finally commits to the Dragon’s perspective, even as Beowulf is committed to the Shaper’s.

In this view, it is not Beowulf who is the sole destroyer of Grendel. Behind Beowulf’s victory is the Shaper, the creator of the heroic and civilizational ideals that impose redemptive patterns upon life’s seemingly monstrous irrationality. Unferth tries to defeat the monster, but as a slayer of his own brothers, Unferth is too close to monstrosity himself; after all, Grendel is descended from Cain, the original brother-slayer. Therefore, Grendel’s defeat must be brought about not by his kindred spirit Unferth, but by one who more perfectly embodies the Shaper’s vision of the hero.

Gardner himself assumes this shaping stance by imposing a cyclical pattern upon the twelve chapters of the novel. Within these chapters, he traces the mythic cycle of the zodiac, the cycle of rebirth, hope, and renewal. Each chapter contains a consecutive figure from the zodiac, beginning with Aries the ram in spring and moving to the coming of the fish-like Christ-hero, Beowulf, who evokes Pisces. When Grendel looks at the sky, he says the stars “torment my wits toward meaningful patterns that do not exist.” On the other hand, when humans look to the stars, they see the artistic patterns reflected in Gardner’s novel. This vision of order and meaning separates the humans from the outsider, the monster, who thinks of the humans as self-deceived. Never able to rise to this vision of life’s ongoing renewal, Grendel is eventually destroyed by it.

This conflict of visions has been played out many times in the history of thought, and Gardner borrows extensively from many different philosophical perspectives. Grendel begins as an egocentric solipsist, examines Alfred North Whitehead’s “process” philosophy in his debate with the Dragon, and ends as a sort of existentialist in the tradition of Jean-Paul Sartre, rejecting the inner essences of things seen by the humans around him. His final curse celebrates meaninglessness: “’Poor Grendel’s had an accident,’ I whisper. ’So may you all.’” Despite this pronouncement, a reader is able to perceive Grendel’s destruction in a way the monster himself cannot, not as the result of the chaos he represents, but as the affirmation of a (literary) pattern and order. Gardner’s artistic shaping of the novel thus guides readers out of the monster’s narrative (even as the author’s sympathies seem to lie with the monster) and into the ordered world of humanity.