If I were writing the Grendel essay...

...I would discuss isolation, suffering, and the human position of such ideas as it pertains to my passage. Remember Auden, gentle reader, from Musee des Beaux Arts, when he posits that suffering, as it is observed by the old Masters (who are never wrong!) "takes place / [w]hile someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along."

Suffering happens! It "occurs" (to graciously steal from a first hour student) without us caring, without us granting permission, without us.

Us includes Grendel. Suffering, like the rest of the world, doesn't ask for his permission. Doesn't consult him at all. And he doesn't like that. Doesn't know what to do with that fact. Like walls.

Consider this: Auden's poem, like Brueghel's painting, positions suffering and tragedy so that it is not the center of attention. Which means something else is at center. Like life. Normal, routinized, humdrum life. So when suffering occurs, while it may be at the center of your life, it's not necessarily...

You get the idea.