Throughout time people have wished to understand what animals want and to understand what they are saying. In Grendel, by John Gardner, the humans had the opportunity to understand the monster Grendel, but wouldn"t give him a chance because he was different. The humans just assumed Grendel was driven by animal instinct, and because of this, they shunned him. What they didn"t realize about Grendel was the fact that he thought the same as them and went through all the emotions they did. Grendel is more human than animal because he thinks and shows emotions on the same level as humans.
The biggest thing that separated Grendel from the rest of the animals was the fact that he tried to apply reason to everything. All of the animals were stupid and didn"t really study anything. They all just acted based on hormones and instinct. This was evident when Grendel was trapped in a tree stump and was facing a charging bull. The bull could have easily killed Grendel had it thought of where to strike, but instead "he fought by instinct, blind mechanism ages old. He"d have fought the same way against an earthquake or an eagle.". The bull would strike the same place over and over and all Grendel had to do was move his leg to avoid injury. Grendel knew the bull was no danger to him and was able to relax and even sleep while the bull was charging. Most of the animals in that situation would have continually struggled to break free of the tree even after the bull missed them multiple times. Grendel thought through everything and tried to truly understand why things were the way they were, and why people acted in the strange ways they did. He even tried to reason through why he was attracted to the Queen Wealtheow. He treated her more as a mathematical equation than he treated her as a person. He described her as "Not easy to define. Mathematically, perhaps a torus, loosely cylindrical, with swellings and constrictions at intervals- This kind of made Grendel more human than most humans were.
