Who or what is the dragon?

The dragon plays the antithesis to the Shaper. Where the Shaper provides a strong sense of meaning for humanity, the dragon believes all forms of society and culture are irrelevant. The dragon is an old creature that has lived for thousands of years. He has seen the rise and fall of many civilizations. So when Grendel comes to him to ask about the humans and their society, the dragon tries to impart his nihilistic wisdom to Grendel. The dragon’s language is extremely heightened and polished, although he even considers talking to Grendel considered to be beneath him. He does convince Grendel that his point of view is correct, but Grendel is too shortsighted to completely understand what the dragon is saying.

Even though Grendel sees the dragon in only one chapter, Grendel feels the dragon’s presence throughout the novel. There are two ways to perceive this: one way is to see the dragon as an ever-present power who guides Grendel’s moral decisions. The other way is to think of the dragon as merely metaphysical. Grendel’s journey to and conversation with the dragon might have only been in his mind. While there was an actual dragon in the poem Beowulf, Gardner might have made him a metaphor for Grendel’s conflicting state of mind rather than an actual dragon.