Grendel Allusions & Cultural References

Literary and Philosophical References

• Beowulf (the entire novel; specifically 70, 41-42, 148, 160, 161-162, 168)

These are all moments when Gardner consciously quotes or refers to the text of the poem. Some are more difficult than others to catch. That first reference shows us that the dragon of Gardner's story is the same one Beowulf will kill at the end of his life.

• Genesis 3 (73, 108)

The phrase "ashes to ashes" refers back to the moment in the Bible when God punishes Adam and Eve with mortality for their disobedience. It's also used in Christian rituals to remind devotees to be humble and to think about death.

• Genesis 4 (Cain and Abel) (51, 108, 146)

The Shaper tells the story of the first murder to explain the difference between humans like King Hrothgar and monsters like Grendel (cursed kin of Cain).

• Deuteronomy 5.9 (158)

Another play on biblical phrasing, from "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God" to "The cave my cave is a jealous cave."

• Psalm 23 (170)

Gardner riffs off this famous psalm (often read during Christian funeral rites). He turns "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want" into "The world is my bone-cave, I shall not want."

• Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" from The Republic (122)

Hrothgar is described as a man chained in a cave (and Wealtheow trapped beside him); Grendel, of course, lives in a literal cave of shadows.

• Norse Mythology (18, 22, 57ff, 137, 173)

When Gardner describes Grendel as an "ugly god," he's borrowing a popular image of Odin as one-eyed and disfigured by hanging. He also uses other elements of myth: the dragon Niðhöggr, who lives at the bottom of the tree Yggdrasil, and the tree itself (those ominous oak trees and their roots).

• Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain (146)

Gardner clearly had Mann's novel in mind when he makes Grendel philosophize about the great deeds of King Scyld in the past. Mann writes: "Is not the pastness of the past the more profound, the more legendary, the more immediately it falls before the present?" In a sense, Grendel feels the same way: what happens in the darkness of the past is dead the second that the moment passes—unless we recall it in the present. King Scyld, then, may as well not have ever existed—except for the Shaper and his songs.

• Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, Inscription on the Shrine(74)

The dragon leaves Grendel with this final bit of wisdom: "Know thyself." This ancient adage has been enlightening hopeful visitors to the shrine of the oracle since around the 6th-8th centuries BCE Of course, when the dragon says it, it sounds bitterly ironic. What's the point of knowing yourself, anyway, if you're someone like Grendel?

• Gorgias of Leontini, On the Nonexistent (28)

Gorgy is the granddaddy of solipsism and inspired such philosophers as George Berkeley ("subjective idealism") and René Descartes ("Cogito ergo sum"—"I think therefore I am"). Some people would take Gorgias's basic ideas and argue that nothing—not even tangible things like tables and chairs—exists outside of the mind that perceives them. So when Grendel says, "I exist, nothing else," he's not being as original as you might think. Gorgias started the whole thing in the 4th century BCE.

• Alfred North Whitehead, "Expression." Lecture Two in Modes of Thought (68, 73, 132)

This is the impossibly tangled-sounding declaration by the dragon that "[i]mportance is primarily monistic in its reference to the universe"—basically saying that reality is one unified whole. Similar ideas pop up in Grendel's conversation with Ork.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, Will to Power and Søren Kierkegaard, The Present Age (6, 19, 23, 28, 70-74, 93, 150, 128, 130-133, 139)

Between Grendel and the dragon, there's a whole lot of nihilism and existential nihilism working in this novel. When the dragon talks about the meaninglessness of being, we can see that Gardner has been reading the likes of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard.

• Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (118)

Red Horse's revolutionary ideas have roots in Machiavelli's statement that society is meant to serve the powerful, and that the powerful are justified in using any means to achieve their ends. Red Horse is even more of an anarchist than young Hrothulf is willing to be; he believes that government rests on violence and therefore should not be allowed to exist.

Historical References

• The Scyldings (77ff)

These guys were absolutely for real, occupying the land that is now present-day Denmark. There are a variety of quasi-historical sources (and downright unreliable ones) that record the names of early kings (like Shield Sheafson). It's important to know that when it comes to early poems and stories like our source poem Beowulf, it's anyone's guess if the characters actually lived or not.

• Beowulf (153-155, 161-163, 168-172)

Legendary hero of the Geats (please say it "yay-AHTs," not "geets"!), nephew of Hygelac, King of the Geats. We learn in the poem that Beowulf's dad, Ecgtheow, got into a bit of a scrape as a young man (he killed someone he shouldn't have), and Hrothgar got him off the hook by paying up a sum of money to the family of the dead man. Hence, Beowulf kind of owes Hrothgar one for saving his dad's life. There's a lot of mystery surrounding Beowulf—especially the origin of his name and just exactly how many heroes with the name "Beowulf" there actually are.

• Hrothgar (the whole book)

King of the Scyldings, his existence is chronicled in legendary Anglo-Saxon epics like Beowulf and Widsith, but also in works of Norse literature and historical chronicles, like the Gesta Danorum ("Deeds of the Danes"). If the chronicles can be trusted, our good king would have lived in the 6th century.

• Wealtheow (93-164)

Because Wealtheow is given this name when she is traded out to the Scyldings as a peace offering, it is hard to know what her exact name might have been or where she came from. In other documents, like Hrolfs saga kraka (that's "Hrothulf's saga"), she is called Ögn and hails from Northumbria, a kingdom in what is now Northern England.

• Hrothulf

Hrothulf appears in Beowulf as the nephew and right-hand man of King Hrothgar, and in Scandinavian tradition as Hrólfr Kraki, a legendary Danish king ("kraki" is a kind of description—like a "bean-pole" in modern English). He has his own saga, Hrolfs saga kraka, which was written much later than Beowulf (probably sometime in the 14th century). Of course, you must be the bomb to get into a saga of your own, especially because these kinds of stories praise the deeds (real or imagined) of a heroic warrior or king from days of old.

• Finn, Hoc, Hildeburh, Hengest, Hnaef (148)

Again, these are possibly historical characters that the young Shaper sings about at the old Shaper's funeral. Gardner lifts the story directly from Beowulf, and it's meant to be a warning about forced alliances. The short tale? Hildeburh is married off to Finn to keep the peace between their tribes, but when Hildeburh's brother Hnaef visits to make sure everything's cool, the tensions bubble to the surface. Long story short: Hildeburh ends up losing her husband, her son, and Hnaef, her brother, all due to the fighting. In both Beowulf and Grendel, we can see that this pattern might repeat itself with Hrothgar's daughter Freawaru—and could also happen at any time with Wealtheow, Hrothgar, and her brother Hygmod.

• Ingeld (21)

Gardner throws Ingeld, Freawaru's intended husband, into the mix because it generally creates more chaos. Historically, Ingeld is the son of King Froda of the Heathobards (who lived somewhere around modern-day Hamburg). King Froda and Hrothgar were locked in a fairly bitter struggle, so it's Hrothgar's idea to marry his daughter Freawaru off to Ingeld as a peace treaty of sorts.