Grendel by John Gardner
Ch.2 Part1

 

 

After reading chapter 1, Chapter 2 takes us an unspecified number of years into the past to tell the story of Grendel’s first exposure to the human world.

 

 

In his youth, Grendel explores his vast underground world with childlike abandon. He is always alone, as the only other creatures in the caverns, aside from his mother, are strange, unspeaking beings that watch Grendel’s every move but never interact with him. One night, Grendel arrives at a pool of firesnakes. He thinks that snakes are guarding something. After a moment of hesitation, he dives into the pool. When he breaks the surface of the water he finds himself, for the first time, in moonlight. Grendel did not go  further the first night, but as time passes he ventures farther and farther out into this strange new world.

 

One day, lured out to the upper world by the smell of a newborn calf, Grendel finds himself painfully trapped in a tree. He bellows for his mother, but she does not come. Then he saw black shaped bull appeared. Grendel’s screams, comes charging at him, its horns ripping Grendel’s leg up to the knee. Grendel realizes that the bull has struck too low and will always strike too low, the bull is a creature of blind instinct. Grendel knows that if he can twist his body away, he will be able to avoid the bull’s thrusts. This event caused him to know that world is nothing  but a chaotic mess of casual, brute violence. The bull continues to attack Grendel, but Grendel ceases to pay attention. Nothing seems to matter anymore, and eventually Grendel falls asleep...