Important Characters in the Chapter:
Grendel: Grendel spends the chapter oddly torn about The Shaper, whom he has claimed to hate, as he watches his health fail.
The Shaper: The Shaper is dying throughout the chapter, and, when he dies, he represents the fall of religion across Hart.
Grendel's Mother: Still a creature, used in the chapter as counterpoint to the civilized world.
Plot Synopsis:
Grendel listens to the Shaper on his deathbed as the Shaper passes away, providing a final half-formed prophecy about the Danes. Grendel watches and laments silently, torn between feeling remorse and feeling nothing. He attends the Shaper's funeral and ends up dismissing the entire thing in favor of the dragon's philosophy.
Moral Philosophy:
"The scent of the dragon is a staleness on the earth" (138).
As Grendel starts to watch the decay of civilization in the religious fanatics who shout counterintuitive messages about hedonism, he notes that this new philosophy reeks of the dragon.
"The Shaper is sick" (139).
The quote that immediately follows the staleness of the dragon is that of the illness of the Shaper. Through the juxtaposition, the Shaper and the dragon are set up as opposites.
"The guards watch anyway, obedient to orders the king has forgotten to cancel" (141).
In watching the humans, Grendel notices that there are plenty of perfunctory acts that they engage in. This is a sort of continuation of the religious rituals from the previous chapter. Gardner is beginning to introduce ideas of societal decay through stagnation. When actions are carried out because of tradition, and have lost their initial justification, Gardner is opening the door for his philosophical criticisms.
"The Shaper whispers for the lamp. The attendant pretends to bring it, though it stands already on the table beside his bed. 'That's better,' the queen says dutifully, and the king says, as if he couldn't see well before, 'You look healthier today'" (143).
Characters are engaging in ritualistic behaviors that have no bearing on the truth. Even those meant to be immune to those rituals, like Hrothgar, who, in the last chapter, did no participate in religious rituals, are beholden to these lies in the face of death.
"the herbalist, no longer useful to the onetime king of poets, paces back and forth slowly, rubbing his hands. He waits for the soft, dry throat-rattle that will free him to go pace elsewhere" (143).
Gardner is setting up multiple ideas about death. In this case, death is a sort of obstacle that prevents people from moving forward, as crass as that may be.
"The head drops back weakly. His visitors wait on. They do not seem to realize that he is dead" (144).
Gardner notes a strange space in between the death of something and the ability to move on. There is stagnation after death before any progress can be made.
"and because now the Shaper is dead, strange thoughts come over me. I think of the pastness of the past: how the moment I am alive in, prisoned in, moves like a slowly tumbling form through darkness, the underground river" (146).
Feeling trapped by his own mother, Grendel ruminates on what the death of the Shaper has done to his understanding of time.
"'Back there in Time' is an allusion of language. They do not exist at all. My wickedness five years ago, or six, or twelve, has no existence except as now . . . sacrificing the slain world to the omnipotence of words" (146).
Grendel, facing a death that he cares for, is struck with an existential crisis in line with what the dragon has said to him in the past.
"Ah, ah, how I loved you, Mama--dead these many years! I snatch a time when I crouched outside the meadhall hearing the first strange hymns of the Shaper. Beauty! Holiness! How my heart rocked! He is dead. I should have captured him, teased him, tormented him, made a fool of him" (146).
This is the place where Gardner is introducing the death of meaning that Nietszche contends with in his own moral philosophy. Grendel is starting to see the regret that comes from not living fully in a time where messaging allowed humans to flourish. Even though Grendel forms these opinions from the perspective of the villain (all the torment he could have inflicted), Gardner is still showing a lament at the death of meaning.
"End of an epoch, I could tell the king. We're on our own again. Abandoned" (149).
Grendel, at the Shaper's funeral, notes that something potent, a guiding principle, has now been permanently removed from civilization with the death of the Shaper, leaving everyone alone forever.
"Nihilo ex nihilo, I always say" (150).
Grendel's final words, meaning "nothing out of nothing" reflects his final way of coping with the symbolic death of meaning in Heart. The only way to move on is to adopt the dragon's perspective, that, because we started from nothing, nothing ultimately can come from our efforts. This is the nihilism of the dragon taking over a means of easing Grendel's pain over the death of the Shaper that he can't quite articulate. It should be noted, the way he uses the phrase is actually the opposite of its intended meaning.
Chapter Analysis:
The death of the Shaper marks the death of religion and mythology inside of Heart. Grendel is contending with how death can immediately remove meaning from a place, but also with how death is not immediately recognized by those suffering through it. As a philosophical exploration, Gardner is setting up the idea of Friedrich Nietzsche, that "God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown." Grendel ultimately lands on the nihilism of the dragon to dismiss the impact of the Shaper, but does so in an unusual way. The Latin expression, nihilo ex nihilo, could be interpreted as some to mean some form of "from ashes to ashes, dust to dust," but it is actually an argument for the existence of a god in philosophy. Nothing does not form something (nothing can come from nothing), so for us to exist, something must have preceded us expanding back to infinity. This is the traditional argument of the expression Grendel uses to end the chapter. For Grendel to use it to mean the opposite shows the distinct tear in his character, trapped between forces he doesn't quite fully understand.