Grendel (John Gardner Novel)
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40 free Grendel (John Gardner Novel) trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
John Gardner's Grendel takes one of the oldest stories in English literature and hands the telling to the monster. The creature who was a shadow at the edge of Beowulf becomes a lonely, sardonic narrator who watches a kingdom rise, listens to its poets and priests, and argues with a dragon about whether anything matters. Published in 1971, it is still read alongside the poem in many literature classes. This quiz covers the novel the way a class would. Plot questions follow the monster from his first meeting with humans to his last night in the meadhall. Character questions cover the king, his queen, his warriors and the outsiders who unsettle them. Others deal with the best-known speeches and lines, described rather than quoted, with the book's structure and its philosophical targets, and with Gardner's own life, his other books and the adaptations the novel inspired. It suits students revising for a test on Grendel, teachers who want a ready multiple-choice set, and book-club readers who want to see how much they remember. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
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Q 01In Beowulf and in John Gardner's Grendel, the monster descends from which cursed biblical figure?
Cain
Cain is the ancestor the blind court poet gives Grendel in verses about an ancient feud between brothers. Hearing it, the monster stumbles into the crowd begging for peace and is attacked.
Q 02What does Grendel call the blind harper whose verses recast King Hrothgar's bloody past as glory?
The Shaper
The Shaper sings so well that even people who lived through the events come to remember them his way. Grendel knows the tales are lies and is shaken by them anyway.
Q 03In John Gardner's Grendel, as in the original poem, how does Beowulf deal the monster a fatal wound?
Tears off his arm
Beowulf tears off his arm at the shoulder after pretending to be asleep among the other warriors. All through the fight he lectures Grendel on how life always renews itself.
Q 04Which Danish thane in Grendel follows the monster home to die a hero, only to be carried back alive?
Unferth
Unferth tracks the monster to his cave and collapses from exhaustion before he can fight. Grendel carries him back to the hall and spares him in every later raid, so a hero's death never comes.
Q 05In John Gardner's Grendel, the monster answers a boastful Danish hero's challenge by pelting him with what?
Apples
Apples are his reply to the hero's fine speech: Grendel pelts him with fruit instead of fighting, then leaves him alive, which shames the man far more than defeat would.
Q 06Which queen in John Gardner's Grendel is handed to King Hrothgar by her brother to buy peace between two peoples?
Wealtheow
Wealtheow moves Grendel so deeply that he stops raiding for a time. Later he seizes her, meaning to kill her, then decides that killing her and sparing her would be equally pointless.
Q 07In John Gardner's Grendel, which trait of the monster's mother leaves her son feeling utterly alone in their cave?
She cannot speak
She cannot speak, and the sounds she does make mean nothing even to her son. Gardner enlarged her part to show, through her silence, how much language matters to a civilization.
Q 08John Gardner's Grendel opens in spring with the monster furious at the stupidity of which animal?
A ram
A ram on a mountainside sets him off in the opening scene. He then jeers at the sky, demanding to know why beasts have no sense or dignity, and gets no reply.
Q 09In John Gardner's Grendel, King Hrothgar's great meadhall, Heorot in the original poem, goes by which shorter name?
Hart
Hart is the modern form of the same word: Heorot meant a stag. The hall's glory has given way to horror by the time the novel opens, twelve years into the monster's raids.
Q 10After visiting the dragon in John Gardner's Grendel, the monster discovers he has gained which protection?
Weapons cannot cut him
Weapons cannot cut him once the dragon's charm takes hold, as he learns when a sentry attacks him outside the hall. The gift sours quickly: he feels more alone than ever.
Q 11John Gardner said he modeled the monster in Grendel on which French philosopher he both loved and hated?
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre struck Gardner as dreadful in his ideas yet so persuasive a writer that you believe him. Gardner claimed that everything the monster says, the philosopher had said in some mood.
Q 12Dying at the end of John Gardner's Grendel, the monster insists that his defeat by Beowulf was merely what?
An accident
An accident is all he will call it, because he slipped on blood during the fight. Blaming chance fits the creed he has held all book long: that the universe is mechanical and without purpose.
Q 13John Gardner tied each of the twelve chapters of Grendel to a member of which famous set of twelve?
Q 21John Gardner, the author of Grendel, was an English professor specializing in which field?
Medieval literature
Medieval literature was his scholarly home: he had taught Beowulf for years at several colleges before retelling it. That standing made academics take a monster's memoir seriously from the start.
Q 22How did Grendel author John Gardner die in 1982, four days before he was due to marry?
A motorcycle crash
A motorcycle crash killed him about two miles from his home in Pennsylvania. He was buried in his hometown beside the younger brother whose death on the family farm had haunted him.
Q 23Which short-story writer studied under Grendel author John Gardner at Chico State and later praised him as a mentor?
Zodiac signs
Zodiac signs set the pattern: each chapter carries the emblem of one month of the monster's final year, ending under Pisces. The cycle hints that his story of death is also one of renewal.
Q 14What is unusual about how John Gardner's Grendel refers to the hero Beowulf?
He is never named
He is never named anywhere in the book, though he kills its narrator. Grendel sees only a huge stranger from over the sea, and Gardner trusted readers to know who had arrived.
Q 15In John Gardner's Grendel, the cave the monster shares with his mother lies hidden beneath what?
A burning lake
A burning lake hides the entrance, and young Grendel first reaches the upper world by swimming up through a pool of firesnakes. Later a Danish warrior makes the same swim downward to challenge him.
Q 16Young Grendel first meets humans in John Gardner's novel while helplessly stuck, his foot caught in what?
Two tree trunks
Two tree trunks pin his foot during a night foray in the woods, and he hangs there crying for his mother. The Danes who find him cannot work out what he is, and fear soon turns them violent.
Q 17At their first meeting in John Gardner's Grendel, what does King Hrothgar hurl at the trapped young monster?
An axe
An axe thrown by the king is how the long war begins, and only the arrival of the monster's mother saves him. Years later Grendel plots to send the old king a nightmare recalling that very throw.
Q 18In John Gardner's Grendel, what advice about how to live does the bored, all-knowing dragon give the monster?
Hoard gold and guard it
Hoard gold and guard it is the whole of his wisdom, offered after a long lecture claiming that nothing matters. Even he admits the goal is pointless, sneering at his own heap of jewels.
Q 19In John Gardner's Grendel, the strangers who sail to Denmark with Beowulf belong to which people?
The Geats
The Geats arrive from over the sea, fifteen in all, though icebergs still choke the water. Grendel watches them come ashore and is struck by their sheer size, above all their leader's.
Q 20In John Gardner's Grendel, King Hrothgar outgrows rival chiefs by sparing his neighbors and demanding what instead?
Tribute
Tribute turns former enemies into paying allies and makes him the strongest of the Danish kings. He even builds roads to link the bands under him.
Raymond Carver
Raymond Carver once told Gardner he disliked an assigned story and was simply told to read it again. He told the story in his foreword to On Becoming a Novelist, where his respect for his old teacher is plain.
Q 24Which novel by Grendel author John Gardner, about feuding siblings in rural Vermont, won a major critics' award?
October Light
October Light took the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1976. It contains a whole invented pulp novel that the sister reads as the quarrel drags on.
Q 25Which 1978 book by Grendel author John Gardner angered fellow writers by attacking novelists such as John Updike?
On Moral Fiction
On Moral Fiction argued that true art affirms life, and it put him on The Dick Cavett Show. He blamed the grudges it left for the cool reviews of his last finished novel.
Q 26In John Gardner's Grendel, which orphaned nephew of King Hrothgar arrives at fourteen and is schooled in revolution?
Hrothulf
Hrothulf accepts his uncle's hospitality while brooding on rebellion, tutored by an old peasant who preaches violence. Yet he stays kind to the small cousins who stand between him and the throne.
Q 27In John Gardner's Grendel, what is the old peasant called who preaches violent revolution to the king's nephew?
Red Horse
Red Horse is a pun on Georges Sorel, the French thinker whose Reflections on Violence his speeches follow almost word for word. He holds that every government is evil.
Q 28Which old, blind priest in John Gardner's Grendel mistakes the monster for the Danes' great god, the Destroyer?
Ork
Ork answers the hidden monster's questions with a heartfelt account of the King of the Gods. His sincerity so puzzles Grendel that he lets the old man live, and three other priests then arrive to scold Ork.
Q 29Sizing up the newly arrived Beowulf in John Gardner's Grendel, the monster reaches which verdict about him?
He is insane
He is insane, Grendel decides, seeing a lust for violence in the man's eyes and lips that do not move in time with his words. The verdict does not stop him raiding the hall that night.
Q 30In John Gardner's Grendel, as in the original poem, what does the monster do with the Danish warriors he kills?
Eats them
Eats them, often after carrying the bodies off to feed in peace where he can still watch the survivors. He scoffs at the funeral rites they hold, yet the comfort they take in them enrages him.