Notes from Underground written by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Grendel written by John Gardner are both novels that contain characters who suffer greatly as the novel progresses. Notes from Underground is the novel about a man, deprived of beneficial social interactions, who attempts to connect the world with European literature, but completely fails. The novel Grendel reflects Grendel's twelve years of war and his inability to accept the beauty of the human spirit. What these two characters suffer from leads to their isolation from the rest of the world and is ultimately their weakness. “Well, we don't even know where this 'real life' is today, what it really is and what it is called. Leave us alone without books and we will immediately become lost and lost – we will not know what to join in, what to cling to, what to love or what to hate, what to respect or what to despise. Dostoyevsky 91). This is a perfect example of the underground man who chooses to isolate himself from society and contemplate all that could happen if humans were left alone without books. He chooses to suffer while trying to figure this out because it only frustrates him. “I understood that the world was nothing; a mechanical chaos of brutal and fortuitous enmity upon which we foolishly impose our hopes and fears. I understood that, finally and absolutely, I exist alone. Grendel has this thought when he is attacked by a bull and thinks that because he is attacked, the whole world is destructive, just like the bull. Although Grendel suffers from being attacked by the bull, he uses it as something more to suffer with. He feels alone and the only one to suffer. He then uses this experience to discover the existence of such patterns, these patterns being suffering. These two examples show readers that Grendel and the Underground Man are suffering far more than necessary. They use their personal experiences and isolate themselves to turn the tables and make it seem 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 Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Suffering is the main concept that authors attempt to incorporate into their texts. In Grendel we see what Grendel is going through and what he actually feels rather than what was portrayed of Grendel in the novel Beowulf. In Grendel, Grendel really suffers. Grendel suffers from 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 see Grendel talking to non-living things and never hearing a response, trapping him in his own thoughts. “So childhood, too, feels good at first, before one notices the terrible sameness, age after age” (Gardner 9). Here Grendel talks about being a child and even then feeling like an outsider. Age after age, he finally begins to realize that he is going through the same circle 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 understood that it wasn't It wasn't what he wanted. “I suddenly felt alone and ugly, almost – as if I had soiled myself – obscene. The cave river roared far below us. Being young, unable to face these things, I bawled and threw myself at my mother and she stretched out her claws and grabbed me, even though I saw that I alarmed her (I had teeth like a saw) and she broke me . against his fat and soft chest, as if to make me part of his flesh again..