A man would roar, "I’ll steal their gold and burn their meadhall!" shaking his sword as if the tip were afire, and a man with ey
es like two pins would say, "Do it now, Cowface! I think you’re not even the man your father was!" The people would laugh. I would back away into the darkness, furious at my stupid need to spy on them, and I would glide to the next camp of men, and I’d hear the same. –Grendel, John Gardner How is Grendel characterized in this passage?
Grendel is characterized as critical of himself but unable to contain his curiosity.
Explanation:
Grendel shows how critical of himself he is when he says that people would say that as good as his father used to be, he demonstrates that he sees himself like he is not able to fulfill the role he was given, and at the same time he can not help but to see just out of curiosity if other people in a different place see him in the same way.
Because the semicolon is used to add a sentence onto another sentence and a colon is used to put together two clauses <em>when the second explains the first </em>