Empathizing With a Monster In the novels Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney, and Grendel by John Gardner, there is a character that is vividly portrayed. This character is the monster Grendel, a non-human being portrayed in two separate ways. The Anglo-Saxon's view Grendel as evil; there's no arguing that point. The Anglo-Saxon view is highly original and different because "In Anglo-Saxon society one of the principal contaminants was the warrior code, which was so deeply …
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…Grendel was not necessarily born malicious but was perceived that way and therefore became that way, when he was not received as a normal being, as he would have liked. For that reason, the reader realizes Grendel dies a miserable, lonely child at heart who just wanted to be loved. He was not an evil demon; he was not a killer; he was an outcast looking for the sense of belonging that he never received.