How we cite our quotes: (Page) Vintage Books, 1989
Quote #10
In my cave, the tedium is worse, of course. My mother no longer shows any sign of sanity, hurrying back and forth, wall to wall, sometimes on two legs, sometimes on four, dark forehead furrowed like a new-plowed field, her eyes glittering and crazy as a captured eagle's. (145)
The natural companionship he might have with his mother—and any hope that he might have it—slips away as she slides further into animal-like behavior. We can only imagine that Mama Grendel loses her sanity because she is locked inside herself and can't reach out to her son.
Quote #11
The priests walk slowly around the pyre, saying antique prayers, and the crowd, all in black, ignoring the black priests, keens. I watch the burning head burst, bare of visions, dark blood dripping from the corner of the mouth and ear.
End of an epoch, I could tell the king. We're on our own again. Abandoned. (149)
Grendel's got a love-hate relationship with the Shaper. Although he's totally contemplated murdering the poet in horrible ways, it's clear that the old man's death is a loss for Grendel. We can see why: the visions of beauty, the ability to turn the ugly into something good—it all goes up in smoke on the Shaper's pyre. Also, who will help these people define themselves now? Without the Shaper, they're like characters without an author.