- Things go according to program at first. The door bursts under Grendel's touch, and he enters, laughing.
- The Geats (Beowulf's group of men) don't move. Grendel can't believe his luck.
- Grendel grabs a tablecloth and ties it around his neck like a bib. Classic Grendel. Let the feasting begin.
- Grendel grabs a sleeping man and gobbles him right down. He goes for another, but...
- Grendel's fallen for the stranger's trick. Beowulf is awake and has been watching him to find out just how this monster rolls.
- For some reason, Grendel jumps back, but the stranger has him in his grip. And a firm grip it is: Grendel can feel his arm coming apart.
- Grendel totally keeps his sense of irony. He compares this whole unearthly death grip thing to two long lost kinsmen "grotesquely shaking hands."
- Gardner's playing with an idea we get in Beowulf itself. The idea is that that the hero and the monster are not so different from each other: they're both basically freaks of nature, and the Anglo-Saxon poem often uses the same word to refer to both: aglæca. (See our Beowulf guide for more on the original poem.)
- Grendel forgets everything else in that moment. The stranger morphs before his eyes, sprouting fiery wings from his shoulders.
- Grendel shakes it off. He thinks that things have to go as he's planned them, so he's not going to let a little thing like morphing fiery wings derail him.
- Grendel kicks to get away from Beowulf, but he's moving in and out of reality now. He feels like he's falling through space and grabbing at the roots of an oak tree. (So now we get it: he was having a death vision earlier.)
- In reality, Grendel's slipping on his own blood. The stranger whispers in his ear, but Grendel's like, "LALALALAAA! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" (Translation: he whispers at the same time so that he doesn't have to listen.)
- Grendel remembers what the dragon said about being a meaningless speck in the swirls of time.
- He sees flames coming out of the stranger's mouth. It's not been a good trip.
- Finally, Grendel catches some of the stranger's words. Beowulf mocks him for his murders and acts of destruction, and he promises that the world will renew itself. Beowulf pledges to kill Grendel for this purpose.
- Grendel calls out for Mama—no, really—and complains that Beowulf is winning because of a trick. He's getting seriously thrashed at this point.
- Now Beowulf goes all John Wayne on Grendel and tells him to sing as he smashes the monster's head in.
- So now it's Grendel's turn to be the Shaper—though a grotesque one. He's forced to sing about the wall against which his head is being smashed.
- Actually, Grendel's song isn't too bad, after a rough start. It's about the impermanence of manmade things.
- Grendel knows he's right about one thing: the stranger is a lunatic. Also, Beowulf is only winning by accident. He slipped in his own blood; if he hadn't, he would have gotten the upper claw.
- Then it happens: the stranger rips off Grendel's arm.
- Grendel runs for the door. The stranger appears to sprout white wings and breathe fire.
- Grendel sees winged men all around him as he retreats, dying. He calls out to Mama, but he realizes that she can't help him.
- And still Grendel says the whole stupid thing was an accident.
- Grendel's vision comes true: he trips on the twisted roots of an oak tree and sees the dark abyss below him. He feels himself going over a cliff into that nothingness. As before, he dreads and longs for the thing that will undo him.
- For a moment, Grendel snaps back to reality. The animals that hate him are watching him die. They're stupid, but they're enjoying it.
- Grendel slips away, but not without cursing everyone (even us?) to die the same kind of death.