Grendel Essay -- Literary Analysis, John Garner

In 1971, American rootage sewer Gardner wrote Grendel. With a mastermind of creativity, John Gardner successfully retells the classic larger-than-life poem, Beowulf. He captures the reader by giving an interesting view of roll and chaos, good and evil, hero and monster, allowing the monsters point of view to be seen. On July 21, 1933 John Gardner was born in Batavia, New York. He was the son of a sermonizer and diary, and his mother taught English. They were very fond of Shakespeare and loved to recite literature. Gardner spent his ahead of time days attending school, playing cut horn, and working on his dads farms. In April 1945, Gardners brother was killed in an accident with a cultipacker on their family farm. Gardner was driving the tractor during the team of the accident. He took the guilt for his siblings death, and as a result he suffered from nightmares and flashbacks. interpreted over by the guilt and self-hatred, he beings to perfect his playing of t he French horn he use the instrument as a halt from the outside world, allowing him to withdraw from his family and other forms of company(Winter 13).This feeling of guilt will be transfer into his writing, such as in the short story repurchase, which recounts the accident (Winter 13). Gardner graduated from Batavia High school, and enrolled into DePauw University. He married Joan Louise Patterson in 1953, and went in to attend Washington University. After graduating from Washington University in 1955, he went on to attend the University of Iowa, where he studied medieval and Anglo-Saxon literature(Howell 1). After receiving his doctoral degree, Gardner spent a period of time teaching at stops State College, Oberlin College and San Francisco College(Howell 2)... ...akes the reader have some compassion towards Grendel, makes it difficult to raise a particular character in the sassy. Another theme of the novel is the confrontation order and chaos. Norma L. Hut human bein g states, Grendel see chaos in all that occurs and therefore insist on chaos as the ultimate principle. Out of the untamed world monsters invade the tamed and symmetrical world of man, entering the mead sign to leave, together with death and destruction, their chaotic mark upon the ordered universe. Grendel seems to view man as a maker of pattern. Stating, They are thinking creatures, pattern makers (Gardner 22). They affair out road through hell with their crackpot theories (Gardner 13). Through such changes, Gardner creates themes that appear in Grendel and much of his later work. He hungered readers with his writing, which as a result empowered him with success.