How we cite our quotes: (Page) Vintage Books, 1989
Quote #4
Drunken men rushed me with battle-axes. I sank to my knees, crying, "Friend! Friend!" They hacked at me, yipping like dogs. I held up a body for protection. (52)
Grendel probably hasn't grappled with the term "self-fulfilling prophecy," but that's exactly the kind of unfair thing that's happening here. Grendel has no intention, so he says, of playing the role of monster to the humans' heroes, and yet cornered into it. The ironic hilarity of him holding up a corpse to protect himself is lost on the terrified humans, but we can't miss it. Grendel is striving to make himself understood, but he's using all the wrong signs.
Quote #5
It was a cold-blooded lie that a god had lovingly made the world and set out the sun and moon as lights to land-dwellers, that brothers had fought, that one of the races was saved, the other cursed. Yet he, the old Shaper, might make it true, by the sweetness of his harp, his cunning trickery. (55)
Grendel's powerlessness in the face of humanity is only made worse by the Shaper's version of "history." Sure, he can eat as many humans as he wants, but he's never going to be able to make history tell the truth (that is, tell the story from his point of view). And because humans control history, they also control a big part of Grendel's identity. The whole situation seems unfair. While Grendel's voice is silenced, Hrothgar's clan can determine their own identity and ensure that their version is the official history that gets passed on to future generations.
Quote #6
"Even now you mock me," Unferth whispered. I had an uneasy feeling that he was close to tears. If he wept, I was not sure I could control myself. His pretensions to uncommon glory were one thing. If for even an instant he pretended to misery like mine... (87)
As it turns out, Unferth is truly one miserable dude. But Grendel understands from the beginning that Unferth, unlike himself, actually deserves the misery he has to live with. Grendel is not willing to put up with Unferth's pity party—and certainly not in his own cave. He can't give Hrothgar's disgraced right-hand man the satisfaction of compassion, even in the form of violence, because no mercy has been shown to Grendel himself.