Grendel Journal Throughout the novel, Grendel, Gardner repeatedly refers to things as “mechanical”. He does this because Grendel sees the world as such a harsh and has a mechanical nature life. He also sees the people as a mechanical thing that is programed to do everything. He uses mechanical to describe the stupidity in our world. “[Grendel] understood that the world was nothing; a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears” life to him is like a big machine except for him, he is an outsider (Gardner 22). Grendel is scared from how life has treated him so the only explanation he has for himself is to blame it on this “mechanical” life he is stuck in only because to him he is the only human.