Unlike Grendel, his mother neither speaks nor questions the world. She spends most of her time in her underground lair and generally experiences the world in a purely physical way. Similarly, she is only able to express any affection for Grendel through physical gestures. Grendel expresses disdain for his mother, but when he is danger he calls for her, and it is her that rescues him when he first encounters humans.
Grendel’s Mother Quotes in Grendel
The Grendel quotes below are all either spoken by Grendel’s Mother or refer to Grendel’s Mother. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 1
Quotes
Behind my back, at the world’s end, my pale slightly glowing fat mother sleeps on, old, sick at heart, in our dingy underground room. Life-bloated, baffled, long-suffering hag. Guilty, she imagines, of some unremembered, perhaps ancestral crime. (She must have some human in her.) Not that she thinks. Not that she dissects and ponders the dusty mechanical bits of her miserable life’s curse.
Related Characters:
Grendel (speaker), Grendel’s Mother
Related Themes:
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Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2
Quotes
I tried to tell her all that had happened, all that I’d come to understand: the meaningless objectness of the world, the universal bruteness. She only stared, troubled at my noise. She’d forgotten all language long ago, or maybe had never known any.
Related Characters:
Grendel (speaker), Grendel’s Mother
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Grendel LitChart as a printable PDF.
Grendel’s Mother Character Timeline in Grendel
The timeline below shows where the character Grendel’s Mother appears in Grendel. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...spring is apparent even in the underground lair where Grendel lives with his foul, monstrous mother. He has felt the stirrings of spring and so has come out of his den,...
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Grendel thinks of his mother sleeping in their underground lair. He thinks that she feels guilty for an ancient crime...
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Chapter 2
...games and explore underground, playing with invented friends. He explored all the chambers of his mother’s cave and eventually discovered a pool of firesnakes. He swam through the pool and discovered...
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...by dawn. He remembers a group of large shapes with eyes that sat in his mother’s cave and watched him. Grendel reflects that he thought his mother loved him in some...
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...joined tree trunks. Trapped out in the world after dawn, he called out for his mother and cried loudly, but she didn’t come. The sun rose and the world seemed horrible...
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Grendel laughed at the stupidity of the bull and kept looking around for his mother. He wondered if the shapes staring at him in the cave were relatives of his....
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...bull was gone. Vultures were flying overhead. He tried to imagine the world from his mother’s perspective and realized that he could never know how she perceives him. He fell asleep...
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...at them, but his voice came out as a moan. He cried out for his mother. The king ordered his men to surround Grendel and he realized that the humans were...
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...was done for, when suddenly he heard a shriek even louder than his. His terrifying mother came rushing in, roaring and shattering trees in her wake. The men fled.
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...were gone now and Grendel guesses that they had receded further underground. Alone with his mother, he attempted to explain to her what he had discovered about the world: its “meaningless...
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...he is the only thing in the world that exists. He becomes upset as his mother continues to not understand him, and then his mother hurls herself on top of him...
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Chapter 4
...beauty and order of the story, even if he had to be the outcast. Grendel’s mother whimpered and scratched at her breast, from which Grendel had not nursed in years. Grendel...
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Chapter 6
...seven of them, taking joy in the killing. He says that he himself became the mother he had once searched for. He felt as though he had finally “become something” and...
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...cave. Three nights later, Unferth arrived, having followed him. Grendel woke up startled, stopped his mother from going to Unferth, and went to see Unferth himself. Unferth was exhausted and injured...
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Chapter 7
...Hart. He spent much time in his cave, thinking of Wealtheow and observing his mindless mother. At times Grendel would go to the meadhall and watch Wealtheow serve all the tables,...
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Chapter 10
Back in the cave, Grendel continues to feel bored. His mother begins to block the entrance to the cave, trying to stop Grendel from leaving. When...
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Grendel decides to attend the Shaper’s funeral. His mother attempts to prevent him from leaving the cave. Grendel considers that she might know something...
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Chapter 12
Grendel calls out for his mother and tells Beowulf that if he wins it is only because of “mindless chance” since...
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Grendel cries out for his mother and flees into the woods, crying out that Beowulf’s victory was an accident. Suddenly he...
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