Ork versus Orc

                In Gardner’s Grendel, Gardner adopts William Blake’s mythological figure “Orc” by taking Orc’s symbolic meanings and using it as a medium to explain the concept of destruction in his novel. Orc is, basically, a positive figure that technically symbolizes destruction, but yet in terms of revolution and freedom. Orc is greatly known as a figure that goes against Urizen (the angel that represents tradition). In many of Blake’s stories, Orc is used as a force that influenced the French Revolution and brings a sense of ambition and freedom to people with lost hope. The most interesting trait of Orc is that William Blake refuses to make him a hero, but yet a mere spirit that inhabits people to fight for revolution and freedom.

                In Gardner’s novel, Gardner uses Ork (Orc with a  “k”) as a priest that finally sees God as a limitation rather than a figure of hope and safety. The priest says on page 131 when Grendel appears to be a God and asks what Ork believes of the King of the Gods, “The King of Gods is the ultimate limitation and His existence is the ultimate irrationality.” Ork has a release of hope when he says this, tearing up and seeing the Destroyer as his savior rather than the devil. In this way, Gardner also adopts the “Milton concept” on how God is bad, and Satan is good, because Satan is freedom and God is holding people back. Ork, realizing this, takes on the mythological Orc’s traits by accepting his idea of freedom and that revolution needs to be taken place before any true hope can happen because right now the only hope they have is an artificial disguise that the Shaper takes and now the Shaper is dying.

                Destruction is one of the main themes in the novel and is still an interesting concept in literature because a lot of times destruction does not just have the connotation of evil and darkness, but of revolution and the idea of starting over. Gardner points out when he brings Ork into the story, that the kingdom is corrupt. The kingdom is being ruled by a dying figure that holds the power of God in the Kingdom, which is slowly killing all of the civilians because they have relied on this figure so deeply that they do not know how to survive without him. When Ork tries bringing this back to the other priests and liberates on his findings, they use religion against him and claim that he is nuts and that he has lost his mind, when really he just holds the fate of seeing the destroyer as a savior and finally understands that he was right about the kingdom. Sadly when he confronts the other priests, they dismiss him and say that God would never appear in front of him.