Grendel the Existentialist Monster :: Grendel Essays

Grendel the Existentialist Monster   The monster Grendel is the ironic eye through which the action is viewed and from this perspective he provides the reader with never-ending examples of buffoonery and self-parody. very much his claims reveal the Sartrean component in his makeup I create the in all earth, blink by blink(Gardner 22). Gardner,of course,wants to make a point hither about solipsism. There is more to the objective world than Grendels ego. Naturally the universe still exists when Grendel closes his eyes. Likewise, when Grendel says I observe myself observing what I observe, (Gardner 29) ,he reminds us of Sartres view of the self-reflective nature of brain. As he said in his interview, Gardner plan to parody Sartres ideas in Being and Nothingess in these sections of the novel. When Grendel says then I am not that which observes I am escape. Alack. (Gardner 29) he plays on the French verb manquer(to lack) that Sartre uses in his description of the lacking qual ity of consciousness. This ability to observe his observing is a clue to the philosophical underpinnings of the early chapters. Gardners irony should be crystal clear--Grendel is gay himself with Sartres phenomenology.   Now what is the reader to make of all this? A brief compact of Sartres description of consciousness may help. According toSartre man exists on the direct of being-in-itself(as a body in a world of objects) and on the take of being-for-itself(consciousness ). The key to understanding Grendels view of the world is this distinction between the in-itself and the for-itself.Since, for Sartre, being-in-itself is uncreated(he stomach find no evidence of a creating God) and superfluous(de trop), it reveals itself as a assort of absurd, meaningless outer reality. But being-for-itself, on the other hand, is the awakeness that consciousness is not the being of the in-itself. Its being is revealed in a more self-contradictory way-- as an emptiness in the center of being. How can it be aware of itself as an object?Impossible says Sartre. Simply move, the for-itself is the absence or the lack(thus Grendels lack) of the objectness of the in-itself . It reveals itself as the nothingness that remains when you realize that your consciousness is not an ken of an object(such as your body), but rather an awareness of the lack of an object or,to put it another way, it is an awareness of a nihilated presence.Grendel is proof that only an