Examples Of Morally Ambiguous Characters In Grendel

Morally ambiguous characters In the novel Grendel, John Gardner creates morally ambiguous characters. One of those characters is Grendel's mother. The audience sees her as this beautiful creature with a cunning attitude in the beginning. However, as the story proceeds we see this unexpected side to her character, which makes her equivocal. This is due to the fact that we, the audience, are reading the novel from the point of view of Grendel, so we see this new perspective of the characters. This means all the character roles are switched around since the story is told from a morally ambiguous character himself. So with that, we must decide what role this woman plays, “good” or “bad”, because she is the one who raised Grendel into what he is.

However, the villagers never made it clear if this creature is only viewed for her “beauty”, or her “deceitful nature”. Like Grendel's character, one knows that society only judges Grendel himself off of what they see on the outside, rather than the inside. So if we compare this to the mother, we know that what men said of her can not be entirely held to the truth. The reason is because, like Grendel, those humans are judging her off of looks, rather than knowing the other half of the story. Since the audience is able to see this second side through Grendel, we are overall the ones who are to decipher the nature of Grendel's