How we cite our quotes: (Page) Vintage Books, 1989
Quote #10
I saw long ago the whole universe as not-my-mother, and I glimpsed my place in it, a hole. Yet I exist, I knew. Then I alone exist, I said. It's me or it. What glee, that glorious recognition!... For even my mama loves me not for myself, my holy specialness (he he ho ha), but for my son-ness, my possessedness, my displacement of air as visible proof of her power. (158)
Grendel finds himself coming up against his old philosophical questions as he leaves his cave for the last time. He's still grasping for an idea about his place in the world, his identity, what he's meant to do. Yeah, sure, he's met with the dragon and had his rude awakening about the randomness of the universe and his lack of "specialness"—but he still feels there's something to his ideas about how he controls the world through his own perception of it.
Wait till he runs up against Beowulf.