Notes from Underground written by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Grendel written by John Gardner are both novels that contain characters who suffer immensely as the novel progresses. Notes from Underground is a novel about a man, deprived of beneficial social interactions, who tries to relate the world to European literature but fails completely. The novel Grendel reflects Grendel's twelve years of war and his inability to accept the beauty of the human mind. What both of these characters suffer from is their isolation from the rest of the world and this is ultimately their weakness. “Because, we don't even know where this “real life” lives today, what it really is and what it's called. Leave us alone without books and we will get confused and immediately lose our way: we will not know what to unite with, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise” (Dostoevsky 91). This is a perfect example of the underground man choosing to isolate himself from society and contemplate all the things that could happen if humans were left alone without books. He chooses to suffer trying to understand it because this only frustrates him. “I understood that the world was nothing; a mechanical chaos of casual and brutal enmity upon which we foolishly impose our hopes and fears. I understood that, finally and absolutely, only I exist." Grendel has this thought when he is attacked by a bull and thinks that because he is attacked, the whole world is just as destructive as the bull. Although Grendel suffers from being attacked by the bull, he uses it as something more to suffer from, he makes himself feel as if he is alone and the only one to suffer. Then use this experience to discover the existence of such patterns, the patterns being suffering. Both of these examples show readers that Grendel and the Underman are suffering more than necessary. They are using their personal experiences and isolation to change the situation and feel like it's them against the world when in reality everyone is suffering. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Suffering is the main concept that authors try to incorporate into their texts. In Grendel, we get to see what Grendel goes through and how he actually feels rather than what was portrayed of Grendel in the novel Beowulf. In Grendel, Grendel really suffers. Grendel is suffering the pain of isolation. Grendel has his mother to build a relationship with, but she lacks the ability to speak, leading him to feel alone. Throughout the novel we find Grendel speaking to non-living elements without ever hearing a response, trapping him in his thoughts. “So even childhood is pleasant at first, before one realizes the terrible sameness, age after age” (Gardner 9). Here Grendel talks about being a child and feeling like an outsider. Age after age, he finally begins to realize that he is going through the same cycle of isolation, and this is what he suffers from the most. At first he's so happy to experience what he is because it's all new, but once he experienced it and realized he was alone, he realized it wasn't what he wanted. «I would suddenly feel alone and ugly, almost, as if I had dirty myself, obscene. The cave river rumbled far below us. Being young, unable to deal with these things, I would scream and lash out at my mother and she would reach out with her claws and grab me, even though I could see that I alarmed her (I had teeth like a saw), and she would tear me to pieces. against her fat, limp breast as if to make me part of her flesh again” (Gardner 17). This is where Grendel talks about suffering since he was a child. Grendel, unable to..