The Chains of Gods

John Gardner’s Grendel is a remarkable book. Adapted into the beautifully appalling children’s cartoon (yes, that’s real), Grendel is at once a retelling of the epic poem of Beowulf and an exploration of multiple philosophical concepts, including Existentialism, Nihilism, and Absurdism.

After reading the Epic of Gilgamesh, I found myself enamored with several philosophical questions, not the least of which was why did this purportedly heroic figure of Gilgamesh start life as a tyrant? I had long since felt skeptical of the concepts of “heroism” in both the moral and narrative senses, so I decided to ape John Gardner and re-tell the Epic of Gilgamesh from Enkidu’s perspective, while exploring the philosophy of morality.

What does it mean to be a hero? What does it mean to be good? Is Kant’s “will to goodness” any different than Nietzsche’s “will to power?” Can morality even exist between people under a power imbalance? If so, what would that look like?

Alongside these questions, I found myself experimenting with form and function. My experimenting made this work nearly impossible to translate into HTML, so I have instead uploaded the book as a file you can download. I hope this isn’t too much of a problem.

This is perhaps my most literary work to date, and while I daresay there is maybe more of me in Edmund Moulde, this work contains perhaps a less masked version of myself. I openly sobbed while writing multiple chapters, especially the final one.

Speaking of: it is important to note that the epilogue and final chapter have swapped places over six times in my revising. I think you should read both, but in whichever order you’d like.

Download here: The Chains of Gods