82 pages • 2 hours read
John GardnerGrendel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1971A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary
From his vantage point near his mere, Grendel sees a goat coming toward him and he scolds it, trying to chase it away. The goat continues to climb, and Grendel shoves it down the mountainside and throws a rock at it, splitting its head. The goat continues to climb. Grendel kills it again and again, feeling under threat “by an animal already dead” (140), but it continues to climb.
In the town, the men continue their daily lives, working and eating, as the days get longer. Grendel hears an elderly woman “telling lies to children” (141) about a huge man who will cross the sea at some point and come to their land.
The Shaper is now very old and unwell. He receives visitors, including the king and queen, and they wait with him as death comes. His last words concern “a time […] when the Danes once again…” (144), and he dies before he completes the thought.
Elsewhere in the village, there is a woman who is married to a nobleman but who had a special relationship with the Shaper; Grendel has observed this woman for some time, and he calls her a “[s]oul of fidelity” (144) because the Shaper tried to romance her—to no avail.
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