Living in a cave at the bottom of a boggy pool, Grendel is not happy, and aware of the pointlessness of his existence he is doubly unhappy. He is also aware that animals are not conscious, that humans are, and that he is somewhere in-between. In one of Gardner's interpolations he finds himself trapped in the cloven fork of a tree, where humans encounter him for the first time and he becomes aware that they impose an order on the world as they categorise him – "tree spirit" may not be a perfect Linnaean order but it indicates intention. Intention is something that Grendel lacks on the conscious level until he gives himself over to one activity only – raiding Heorot, the meadhall of King Hrothgar.

Gardner's Hrothgar is much more mercenary and grasping than the BEOWULF original, Queen Wealtheow more queenly and forgiving, and Unferth his defeated champion is less heroic. Beowulf himself is on the scene for a much shorter time than in the original – but when you think that Grendel was raiding Heorot for twelve years before rescue arrived it is only natural that he should give more of his account over to the totality of his life. Unfortunately, that totality is mostly given over to other people's body parts, dragged down through the firesnakes to the lair of his demented mother.

It was back in 1970 that Penguin Classics dumped David Wright's prose translation for what was then a controversial verse adaptation, which must have been the same time John Gardner was writing in the U.S.A. There was something in the air about reconsideration, which has helped keep GRENDEL in print over there as schoolteachers have used it as a companion piece to the Old English, but this fantasy is more interesting than that and something of an epic in itself.