Grendel's Attitude Toward Language
In “Grendel,” Grendel’s language evolves and becomes more and more sophisticated as he gains knowledge and contact with the human world. In the beginning of the novel, Grendel spends his time observing the humans and he manages to pick up on their linguistic techniques, skills and structure of the human language, turning it into his everyday speech. The next evolution of Grendel’s language comes from when he is introduced to the Shaper—he develops a respect for the poetic nature of the human language. Grendel sees the Shaper molding his listeners with his flowery words. Grendel also finds linguistic style in Unferth, who uses words to persuade the Thanes and his followers.
Because of
Grendel’s encounters with the humans, the reader comes to know that Grendel can
speak the human’s language even though he is never actually witnessed him
talking to humans. While observing
the humans, Grendel learns of about the power of language, especially from the
Shaper. Grendel realizes that the power
that the Shaper has is to tell lies and change history through his fancy
words. Even with his observations about the Shaper and Unferth,
Grendel does not acknowledge his own style and advance in language. The
reader becomes aware of Grendel’s linguistic developments only through the
change in writing style and syntax as he continues his story. At the
same time, the reader realizes that even though he despises the Shaper at
times, he is jealous of the Shaper’s linguistic skills and he envies his power
and influence. He also starts to show off his style in chapter six
when he refers to himself in poetic third person names like “Ruiner of
Meadhalls, Wrecker of Kings!”
Towards the end of
the novel, Grendel’s use of language becomes more advanced. An example of
this is when Grendel writes an entire chapter, chapter 8, in the form of a
play. Setting a chapter up like a play demonstrates his linguistic
skills because Grendel had to set up characters’ speeches and
monologues. In addition, Grendel starts to write in poetry. The
ultimate display of Grendel’s improvement of language, however, is when he
speaks with Unferth, who actually is able to converse with
Grendel. This proves that Grendel has evolved so that he could
communicate with the humans which is important to Grendel because one thing
that he lacked was the ability to communicate, but now he is longer isolated
from the world.
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