The portrayal of monsters, specifically dragons, in literature has always fascinated me. I find that it is their detachment from humanity that makes them so human, and therefore so wonderful.
What I mean by this is you can tell a lot about a time, and its people, by their monsters and dragons. In the classic case of the gold-hoarding Western-style dragon, these creatures personify humanity's greed, vanity, arrogance, and pride. They embody these ideas and feelings much stronger than one person can, with a lack of morals and kindness and other such frivolous ideas getting in the way, and as such are more human than we make them out to be. They exist for solely selfish reasons and only to sustain themselves--and as such represent mankind's own greed and desires, for better or for worse. A prime example of all this is the dragon in John Gardner's Grendel.
Gardner's dragon is a relatively minor character in the novel, yet I find his character to be one of the most interesting. He is an omniscient character, possessing a deep understanding and
bitter outlook on life and anything that isn’t gold or himself. After being driven off by the Danes, Grendel goes to the dragon for advice and their interaction is one of my favorite parts of the novel. I find his interactions
with Grendel very fascinating, as they both mirror and oppose each other. On one hand there is the dragon, who is already explained to be a fairly cut-and-dry character driven by his own desires and his belief in the predetermined and inevitable events of time. Grendel on the other hand is a more malleable creature, confused by the rest of the world's lack of understanding and still uncertain of his role in the grand scheme of things. While each monster is far from human, I find that in this interaction it is clear they possess very human-like qualities that many can relate to. The dragon expresses desire, selfishness, and the acceptance of fate, and Grendel representing feelings of being outcast from society, and of confusion, and unwantedness. Both characters also share mutual experiences with loneliness. Grendel is sympathetic, to an extent, for his frustration with having no one understand his feelings or words, in the animal or human world. Much of his inner struggles stem from having no one to relate, and the dragon, too, is infuriated with Grendel (and by extent everyone) for not understanding his advanced philosophies and ideas. They both feel alienated in that respect, even if they don't realize it in their communication barriers.
What this all boils down to is sometimes it takes a couple of inhuman monsters to express very human feelings. These two characters, while not physically human in the slightest, represent and embody very simple, human ideas. It's somewhat funny to think about, that sometimes, to understand our inner selves, we need to look at the very monsters we create.
