Chap­ter 4 intri­cate­ly explores the theme of dual­i­ty through the con­trast­ing fig­ures of the Shaper and Gren­del. The Shaper, a mas­ter of art and music, uses his tal­ents to breathe life into Hrothgar’s mead­hall, trans­form­ing it into a space of uni­ty and cel­e­bra­tion. His songs, rich with tales of hero­ism and glo­ry, pull the peo­ple togeth­er, forg­ing a col­lec­tive iden­ti­ty root­ed in joy and pride. As they gath­er in the mead­hall, Gren­del, observ­ing from a dis­tance, is faced with the sharp con­trast between the world the Shaper cre­ates and his own dark, vio­lent nature. The music and cel­e­bra­tion seem to offer peace and pur­pose to the Danes, but for Gren­del, they serve only to mag­ni­fy his alien­ation and lone­li­ness. He feels increas­ing­ly dis­tanced from the hap­pi­ness around him, as the Shaper’s art empha­sizes every­thing he can nev­er be—a force of light, hope, and uni­ty, while Gren­del is only dark­ness and iso­la­tion. The chap­ter high­lights Grendel’s strug­gle to rec­on­cile these oppos­ing forces with­in him­self, his inter­nal con­flict becom­ing more intense as he wit­ness­es the pow­er of the Shaper’s cre­ation.

Hrothgar’s ambi­tion to estab­lish a mead­hall rep­re­sents his dream of leav­ing a lega­cy of glo­ry and pow­er for future gen­er­a­tions. The con­struc­tion of the mead­hall is not just a phys­i­cal endeav­or, but a sym­bol of the king’s desire for immor­tal­i­ty through his people’s admi­ra­tion. Crafts­men and work­ers gath­er to bring this grand vision to life, with their efforts focused on cre­at­ing a space of cel­e­bra­tion and com­mu­nal pride. Yet to Gren­del, the mead­hall and its sur­round­ing fes­tiv­i­ties are lit­tle more than a facade, a dis­trac­tion from the bru­tal truths that lurk beneath the sur­face of their world. Gren­del views the rev­el­ry as a tool of flat­tery, a way for the Danes to avoid fac­ing the vio­lence, death, and suf­fer­ing that are inevitable parts of life. His grow­ing bit­ter­ness stems from this real­iza­tion, as he watch­es Hrothgar’s dream unfold, aware that it is built on lies and self-decep­tion. He becomes more and more dis­il­lu­sioned with the hol­low nature of the cel­e­bra­tions, ques­tion­ing whether the Shaper’s art tru­ly has the pow­er to reshape the bru­tal real­i­ties of exis­tence into some­thing beau­ti­ful and mean­ing­ful.

As the Shaper’s songs fill the mead­hall, Gren­del is torn between admi­ra­tion for the music and an over­whelm­ing sense of anger. The songs evoke visions of uni­ty and cama­raderie among the Thaness, but these images seem dis­tant and unre­al to Gren­del, who views humanity’s dark­er instincts as inescapable. He can­not ignore the vio­lence and destruc­tion that con­tin­ue to shape the world around him, and he is frus­trat­ed by the con­trast between the Shaper’s ide­al­ized world and the harsh­ness of real­i­ty. In a fit of frus­tra­tion, Gren­del is con­sumed by the futil­i­ty of his exis­tence and the over­whelm­ing con­tra­dic­tions of life. The Shaper’s art promis­es peace, uni­ty, and progress, but Gren­del is left ques­tion­ing the val­ue of these illu­sions in a world where vio­lence and destruc­tion are con­stants. His inter­nal con­flict deep­ens as he is unable to accept the notion of redemp­tion or change, par­tic­u­lar­ly as he stum­bles upon the life­less body of a man—an unde­ni­able reminder of the bru­tal real­i­ty that the Shaper’s art seeks to obscure. This grim dis­cov­ery marks a turn­ing point for Gren­del, who, in his anger and despair, retreats into the for­est, fur­ther entan­gling him­self in his thoughts of self-loathing and frus­tra­tion.

In this chap­ter, the read­er is drawn into a pro­found exam­i­na­tion of the dual­i­ty between cre­ation and destruc­tion, beau­ty and hor­ror, as embod­ied by the Shaper and Gren­del. The Shaper’s abil­i­ty to craft sto­ries of hero­ism and peace con­trasts sharply with Grendel’s per­cep­tion of the world as a place of vio­lence and suf­fer­ing. Gren­del, while not entire­ly dis­miss­ing the Shaper’s pow­er, resents the beau­ty that he can nev­er embody. His deep sense of alien­ation inten­si­fies as he con­tem­plates his role in a world defined by fear and hatred, unable to rec­on­cile his exis­tence with the noble ideals pro­ject­ed by the Shaper’s art. This inner tur­moil is com­pound­ed by his grow­ing under­stand­ing of the lim­its of human endeav­or and the exis­ten­tial weight of his own exis­tence. Ulti­mate­ly, the chap­ter high­lights Grendel’s search for mean­ing in a world where beau­ty is built on illu­sions, and the harsh truths of life can­not be eas­i­ly ignored or for­got­ten. As the chap­ter draws to a close, Grendel’s depar­ture into the for­est sym­bol­izes his retreat into him­self, where he is left to grap­ple with the con­flict between the beau­ty he sees in the world and the dark­ness that defines his own nature.