In Grendel  by John Gardner, Gardner creates the world-wide philosophical question, “What’s is more monstrous: man or beast?”. In hope to answer this, he takes the antagonist Grendel from Beowulf and twists Grendel into a cynical, yet emotional, character that hosts two different monsters inside of him: a beast and a man. In this first chapter Grendel is introduced as a being that lives in the deepest of the forest and lives like an animal but has the sophistication of a man, with complex thoughts and a range of emotion. Though most people blame his anger on his animalistic side, he craves the ability to communicate, and in some ways to be a part of the community. For example he, like the rest of human society, is manipulated by the shaper, but yet still has the survival instincts of a beast. Though Gardner approaches this as a unique and different idea, there have been countless characters just like Grendel, except they were introduced as werewolves, or wolves that can appear as men.

                Remus and Romulus were, in a nutshell, two demigod brothers in Roman Mythology that were meant to be strong, fearless men but instead got thrown into the river to drown. Their father, a Roman God named Ares, forced a she-wolf to save them before they could drown. The she-wolf granted them her milk, feeding them and sheltering them in the only way she could because she could not communicate and continued to mother them until they could return to society. Though they were obviously more sophisticated then her, for a moment in time they were nothing more than humanistic wolves themselves because they held an emotional attachment to the she-wolf and they saw her, despite being intellectually different, as their mother and lived like her. While they were not actually the physically form of werewolves, they still held the issues of a werewolf.

                Though Grendel is on the opposite of Remus & Romulus because he is actually born a beast, they share the same story line. Grendel and the brothers are both in the same archetypal situation; they live between two worlds because they are born as one type of species but are unconsciously living like the other. Remus & Romulus for instance, should have stayed in the wolf pack, as Grendel should have been accepted and granted into society. This could be a cause of their irrational decisions when they fully step foot into their worlds. When Grendel lets the beast take him over because of his anger toward his humanistic side, he turns into a mass murderer and kills half the town. When Remus & Romulus step foot in society and take hold of the throne of Rome, they both commit terrible acts because they are incapable of reentering society in a normal manner. Romulus for example, broke human ethics and raped a large amount of women, then started a war.

                Personally, I do not think there is only one answer to Gardener’s question. I think there are a thousand answers that can go along with this question, but if seen compared to Remus & Romulus’ tale, it is easy to say that his monstrous acts are because he is a mix between two worlds.