The protagonist and narrator of the novel. A great, bearlike monster, Grendel is the first of three monsters defeated by the Geatish hero Beowulf in the sixth-century poem Beowulf. In Grendel, he is a lonely creature who seeks an understanding of the seemingly meaningless world around him.
Though Grendel is interested in them, he is both more animal (he is a solitary hunter) and more humane (he is disgusted with the way the men treat their environment.) Human/Animal 5: Grendel tries to fight the ultimate form of humanity--the songs of the Shaper--by screaming like an animal.
