Lessons Learned

Duality was William Blake’s signature—the mix of innocence and experience, of grace and rage; it was what seemed to hold his works together. So maybe the quote at the beginning of John Gardner’s Grendel should have hinted at the duality within the pages, served as a sort of warning for the oncoming headache that was sure to settle deep into our skulls.

But we missed it.

That, however, didn’t make the duality any less present (or keep our heads from, y’know, cracking into thousands of tiny splinters). Innocence and experience, love and hate, good and evil, Dragon and Shaper—there is no set side that Grendel finds himself upon throughout the course of his story. And the best demonstration of this that I can find is that of the Dragon and the Shaper.

Most of my class seemed to claim in various discussions that, in the aftermath of his Chapter Five Meet the Dragon Migraine, Grendel settled into the ancient creature’s mentality. With that, though, I disagree. Even after chapter five, even after meeting the Dragon, Grendel makes comments or acts in ways that just don’t fit with the philosophies he has supposedly taken on. On page 76, Chapter 6, Grendel says “Though I scorned them, sometimes hated them, there had been something between myself and men when we could fight”. Where in that is the Dragon’s mentality of the human’s futility and “crackpot theories”? Where in that is the resignation to let things pass as they please?

Precisely. In that quote, Grendel demonstrates the duality that is so key to Blake’s writing. While he is, for the large majority, given over to Dragon’s pile of gold explanation, he still finds himself believing that there is (or at least was) more to his relationship with man. That he almost misses the feeling of belonging to something in the struggle, even if that was the antagonistic and violent retaliations; that now, with him charmed to the point of near-immortality, something is gone.

“Enough of that! A night for tearing heads off, bathing in blood! Except, alas, he has killed his quota for the season. Care, take care of the gold-egg-laying goose!” (93) is another prime example of Blake’s duality-heavy influence. The phrase “killed his quota” feels akin to the Shaper’s mentality, where there are rules, restrictions set in place like those of war—unspoken, but present nonetheless. There is a limit, a set number that Grendel allows himself to kill, or maybe requires of himself. And in that, we see the Shaper’s influence: Grendel will kill, he will enjoy doing it, but he will respect the balance and do no more than is absolutely necessary. That line however is immediately followed by a distinctly Dragon-esque line making reference to a “gold-egg-laying goose”. Geese sit on their eggs to protect them, to warm them, to guard them—as the Dragon does and tells Grendel to.

We missed the warning, got smacked in the face with Blake-esque duality, and were rewarded with migraines that felt like death, but, if nothing else, we gained one useful nugget of information for future readings:

Always look the quote up first.