beowulf essay about grendel

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Grendel Quotes in Beowulf

Sample Essay Outlines

These are topics on which you can write a substantial analytical paper. They are designed to test your understanding of major themes and details from the work as a whole. Following the topics are outlines you can use as a starting point for writing an analytical paper.

Outline I. Thesis Statement: In his single-minded quest for glory, Beowulf is reminiscent of a specific group of modern young executives in that they place their careers above all other aspects of their lives as he placed the quest for glory above all other aspects of his life.

II. Quest for glory A. Slaying Grendel B. Slaying Grendel’s mother C. Slaying the dragon

III. Solitary life A. Lack of wife B. Lack of children C. Lack of close friends

IV. Military life A. Travel at lord’s orders B. Live with other soldiers C. Place lord over self

V. Comparison with a specific group of modern young executives A. Quest for great success quickly B. Lack of social life or family life C. Spend whatever little non-working time is available with co-workers D. Place company values above personal values

Outline I. Thesis Statement: In his quest for glory, Beowulf fights three important battles—two with monsters and one with a dragon. These battles have both similarities and differences.

II. Battle with Grendel A. Hrothgar sends for Beowulf B. Grendel attacks Herot, killing Hondshew C. Barehanded combat between Beowulf and Grendel D. Beowulf kills Grendel by tearing off his claw, arm, and shoulder E. Grendel escapes to his lair to die

III. Battle with Grendel’s mother A. She attacks the sleeping Danes in Herot in revenge for the murder of her son B. The monster kills Esher, carrying off his body and her son’s body parts C. Hrothgar’s soldiers track her for Beowulf D. Barehanded battle until Beowulf uses the giants’ magical sword which he finds in the battlehall E. Beowulf kills her by slicing into her neck

IV. Battle with the dragon A. Dragon awakened by thief/slave who steals a cup from his treasure B. Angry dragon uses his fiery breath to burn down the Geats’ homes C. His own people summon Beowulf to slay the dragon D. Beowulf realizes he may die killing the dragon but battles him nonetheless E. Both Beowulf and the dragon are slain

Outline I. Thesis Statement: Beowulf attempts to gain glory throughout his life.

II. Early life A. Swimming contest with Brecca B. Chasing the giants from the earth C. Hunting monsters from the ocean D. War victories

III. Battle with Grendel A. Sails from Geatland to Denmark with a small band of soldiers specifically to kill the monster B. Vows to fight barehanded C. Wants to battle Grendel with only his small group of soldiers and no others D. Prefers death to defeat

IV. Battle with Grendel’s mother A. Promises Hrothgar he will kill her B. Dons his armor and enters the lake alone C. Keeps battling, despite the ineffectiveness of his weapons D. Searches for Grendel’s corpse after killing the mother monster

V. Battle with the dragon A. Intends to kill the dragon single-handedly B. Uses an iron shield, sword, and armor only because of the dragon’s fiery breath C. Braves the heat of the dragon’s fire D. Calls the dragon with an angry battlecry E. Dismembers the dragon even after incurring a mortal wound

Outline I. Thesis Statement: Women’s liberation and equality laws have greatly changed the role of women in society as can be seen through a reading of Beowulf.

II. Higd A. Known as Higlac’s queen B. Sent gifts by Welthow, Hrothgar’s queen C. Served ale at her husband’s banquets D. Beowulf refuses the throne when she offers it to him, instead of her son, after her husband’s death

III. Welthow A. Known as Hrothgar’s queen B. Serves mead at her husband’s banquets C. Speaks only to praise her lord D. Expects Hrothulf to protect her sons upon her husband’s death E. Politically naive as demonstrated by her speech at the second feast wherein she claims all is at peace in Hroth-gar’s court

IV. Finn’s wife (no name given) A. Finn attacks her people and kills their king B. Her son and brother are killed in the battle C. Her husband killed a year later at the end of the unwilling treaty Finn forced upon her people D. Gratefully kidnapped by her people upon her husband’s murder

Outline I. Thesis Statement: The story of Siegmund, sung by the scop during the feast at Herot, in many ways reflects the actual story and purpose of Beowulf.

II. Similarities between the story A. Both men are examples of heroic characters in pagan tradition B. Both men are involved in battle(s) C. Both men find treasure D. Both men are lauded after their death

III. The oral tradition in the song of Siegmund A. Certain ideas or phrases reiterated for emphasis B. Chosen to be appropriate to occasion at which it was recited C. Chosen with audience in mind—kings and nobles D. Reflects legends, myths, and histories with which audience would be familiar E. Reflects interests and values of culture at time it was told

IV. The oral tradition in Beowulf A. Certain ideas or phrases reiterated for emphasis B. Chosen to be appropriate to occasion at which it was recited C. Chosen with audience in mind D. Reflects legends, myths, and histories with which audience would be familiar E. Reflects interests and values of culture at time it was told

V. Siegmund A. Heroic character B. Kills a dragon C. Uses cunning as his main weapon in battle D. Finds treasure E. Final battle fought alone

VI. Beowulf A. Heroic character B. Kills two monsters and a dragon C. Uses cunning as main weapon in battles D. Finds treasure E. Final battle fought alone

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Beowulf Circa Eighth Century

The Poem “Beowulf”: Character Analysis Essay (Critical Writing)

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Beowulf presents one of the most important pieces of English literature from the Anglo-Saxon period because of its epic nature and historic value. The poem depicts the heroic deeds of the warrior Beowulf and captures the Anglo-Saxon culture of the medieval period. The poem is divided into three parts for each of Beowulf’s heroic battles with Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon. In each part of the poem, Beowulf demonstrates different heroic traits, ultimately creating his image of an epic hero.

Firstly, Beowulf’s story in the poem starts when he offers to help King Hrothgar defeat the monster known as Grendel. The character proves the seriousness of his intentions by boasting about his previous victories in battle with nine sea monsters, demonstrating his courage. In the poem, Grendel is depicted as a monster that appears “bigger than any man” and stronger than the main character (Heaney, 2008, p.93). During his fight with Grendel, Beowulf demonstrates bravery by fighting the monster bare-handed to gain great fame and honor.

Next, in the part of the poem which depicts Beowulf’s battle with Grendel’s mother, the character demonstrates his commitment to duty and King Hrothgar by killing Grendel’s mother. Furthermore, Beowulf demonstrates his intelligence when he discovers that his sword cannot hurt Grendel’s mother and finds a magic sword inside her cave. Thus, in addition to bravery and courage often associated with epic heroes, Beowulf possesses such heroic qualities as loyalty and intelligence.

Lastly, Beowulf enters the fight with the last monster as the king of Geats. During his last battle, Beowulf demonstrates care for his soldiers, contrary to his actions in the first parts of the poem. He also shows the will to self-sacrifice, which resonates with one of his loyal soldiers. Together, they kill the dragon, and Beowulf dies not only as a famous hero but also as a responsible leader and ruler.

In conclusion, this essay explored heroic traits in the character of Beowulf. The essay defines how each chapter of the poem captures different heroic traits exhibited by Beowulf, such as bravery and courage, loyalty and intelligence, wisdom and self-sacrificing. Thus, the paper explains how the combination of different heroic traits creates the image of Beowulf as an epic hero and captures the character’s progression from a brave warrior to a wise and responsible ruler.

Heaney, S. (2008). Beowulf: An illustrated edition. W.W. Norton & Company.

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Bibliography

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• Literature Notes
• Major Themes in Beowulf
• Poem Summary
• About Beowulf
• Character List
• Summary and Analysis
• Lines 1-193
• Lines 194-606
• Lines 607-836
• Lines 837-1062
• Lines 1063-1250
• Lines 1251-1491
• Lines 1492-1650
• Lines 1651-1887
• Lines 1888-2199
• Lines 2200-2400
• Lines 2401-2630
• Lines 2631-2820
• Lines 2821-3182
• Character Analysis
• Grendel's Mother
• Character Map
• The Beowulf Poet
• The Beowulf Manuscript
• Critical Essays
• Major Symbols in Beowulf
• Famous Quotes from Beowulf
• Film Versions of Beowulf
• Full Glossary for Beowulf
• Essay Questions
• Practice Projects
• Cite this Literature Note

Critical Essays Major Themes in Beowulf

A theme in a literary work is a recurring, unifying subject or idea, a motif that allows us to understand more deeply the character and their world. In Beowulf, the major themes reflect the values and the motivations of the characters.

One of the central themes of Beowulf, embodied by its title character, is loyalty. At every step of his career, loyalty is Beowulf's guiding virtue.

Beowulf comes to the assistance of the Danes (Scyldings) for complicated reasons. Certainly he is interested in increasing his reputation and gaining honor and payment for his own king back in Geatland. However, we soon learn that a major motivation is a family debt that Beowulf owes to Hrothgar. The young Geat is devoted to the old king because Hrothgar came to the assistance of Beowulf's father, Ecgtheow, years before. Now deceased, Ecgtheow had killed a leader of another tribe in a blood feud. When the tribe sought vengeance, Hrothgar, then a young king, sheltered Beowulf's father and settled the feud by paying tribute (wergild) in the form of "fine old treasures" (472) to Ecgtheow's enemies. Hrothgar even remembers Beowulf as a child. The tie between the families goes back many years, and Beowulf is proud to be able to lend his loyal services to Hrothgar.

When the hero returns to Geatland, he continues his loyalty to his uncle and king, Hygelac, risking his life even when the tactics of the ruler are not the best. After Hygelac is killed in an ill-advised raid on Frisia, Beowulf makes a heroic escape (2359 ff.) back to Geatland. Beowulf could become king then but is more loyal than ambitious. Queen Hygd offers Beowulf the throne after her husband dies, thinking that her young son (Heardred) is unable to protect the kingdom; Beowulf refuses and serves the young king faithfully. After Heardred is killed, Beowulf does become king and rules with honor and fidelity to his office and his people for 50 years. In his final test, the burden of loyalty will rest on other, younger shoulders.

Preparing for his last battle, with the fiery dragon, Beowulf puts his trust in 11 of his finest men, retainers who have vowed to fight to the death for him. Although the now elderly king insists on taking on the dragon alone, he brings along the 11 in case he needs them. When it is apparent that Beowulf is losing the battle to the dragon, however, all but one of his men run and hide in the woods. Only Wiglaf, an inexperienced thane who has great respect for his king, remains loyal. Wiglaf calls to the others in vain. Realizing that they will be no help and that his king is about to be killed, he stands beside the old man to fight to the death — theirs or the dragon's. For Beowulf, sadly, it is the end. Although he and Wiglaf kill the dragon, the king dies. As he dies, Beowulf passes the kingdom on to the brave and loyal Wiglaf.

Another motivating factor for Beowulf — and a central theme in the epic — is reputation. From the beginning, Beowulf is rightly concerned about how the rest of the world will see him. He introduces himself to the Scyldings by citing achievements that gained honor for him and his king. When a drunken Unferth verbally assaults Beowulf at the first banquet, at issue is the hero's reputation. Unferth's slur is the worst kind of insult for Beowulf because his reputation is his most valuable possession. Reputation is also the single quality that endures after death, his one key to immortality. That's why Beowulf later leaves the gold in the cave beneath the mere, after defeating the mother, preferring to return with Grendel's head and the magic sword's hilt rather than treasure. He has and continues to amass treasures; his intent now is in building his fame.

Unferth's slur accuses Beowulf of foolishly engaging in a seven-day swimming contest on the open sea, as a youth, and losing. If Beowulf can't win a match like that, Unferth asserts, he surely can't defeat Grendel. Beowulf defends his reputation with such grace and persuasion that he wins the confidence of King Hrothgar and the rest of the Danes. He points out that he swam with Breca for five nights, not wanting to abandon the weaker boy. Rough seas then drove them apart, and Beowulf had to kill nine sea monsters before going ashore in the morning. His reputation intact, Beowulf prepares to meet Grendel and further enhance his fame.

As he discusses Beowulf's later years, the poet lists the virtues (2177 ff.) leading to the great man's fine reputation. Beowulf is courageous and famous for his performance in battle but equally well known for his good deeds. Although aggressive in war, Beowulf has "no savage mind" (2180) and never kills his comrades when drinking, an important quality in the heroic world of the mead-hall. Beowulf respects the gifts of strength and leadership that he possesses.

As he prepares to meet the dragon, near the end of the poem, now King Beowulf again considers his reputation. He insists on facing the dragon alone despite the fact that his death will leave his people in jeopardy. Hrothgar's Sermon warned Beowulf of the dangers of pride, and some critics have accused the great warrior of excessive pride (hubris) in the defense of his reputation. A more considerate judgment might be that Beowulf is an old man with little time left and deserves the right to die as a warrior. The final words of the poem, stating that Beowulf was "most eager for fame' (3182), might be best understood by a modern audience by remembering that, in Beowulf's world, fame is synonymous with reputation.

Generosity and Hospitality

The Scyldings' King Hrothgar and Queen Wealhtheow embody the themes of generosity and hospitality. The code of the comitatus is at the heart of the Beowulf epic. In this system, the king or feudal lord provides land, weapons, and a share of treasure to his warriors (called thanes or retainers) in return for their support of the leader in battle. The leader's generosity is one of his highest qualities. There are more than 30 different terms for "king" in the poem, and many of them have to do with this role as provider. He is the "ring-giver' (35) or the "treasure-giver" (607); his seat of power is the "gift-throne" (168).

When booty is seized from an enemy in battle, everything goes to the king. He then allots treasure to each warrior according to the man's achievements as a soldier. When Beowulf defeats Grendel and Grendel's mother, he expects and receives great riches as his reward, including a golden banner, helmet, and mail-shirt, as well as a jeweled sword, magnificent horses with golden trappings that hang to the ground, a gem-studded saddle, and a golden collar. Such generosity is emblematic of Hrothgar's character. In turn, Beowulf will present these treasures to his own king, Hygelac, who will then honor Beowulf with appropriate gifts. Propriety/generosity is, thus, a crucial part of the political, military, social, and economic structure of the culture.

Wealhtheow shares in the gift giving and is the perfect hostess. When she serves mead in Heorot, it is an act of propriety and diplomacy, attending first to her king and then to various guests, paying special attention to Beowulf. An improper queen would be one like Modthrytho (1931 ff.) who was so inhospitable as to have her own warriors executed for the offense of merely looking into her eyes.

Hospitality is such an established part of the culture that the poet feels free to refer to it with casual humor. When Beowulf reports to Hrothgar on his victory over Grendel (957 ff.), he ironically speaks in terms of hospitality. He tried, he says, to "welcome my enemy" (969) with a firm handshake but was disappointed when he received only a "visitor's token" (971), Grendel's giant claw, "that dear [meaning 'precious'] gift" (973), a kind of macabre gratuity for services rendered. Beowulf had, ironically speaking, tried to be the perfect host; but he wanted the entire ogre body as his tip . Grendel left only his claw as a cheap compensation.

Despite Unferth's jealous rant at the first banquet, the most serious embodiment of envy in the poem is Grendel. The ogre who has menaced Hrothgar's people for 12 years is envious of the Danes because he can never share in mankind's hope or joy. The monster's motivation is one of the few undeniably Christian influences in the epic. Grendel is a descendant of Cain, the biblical son of Adam and Eve who killed his brother Abel out of jealousy (Genesis 4). The legend is that the monsters of the earth are Cain's descendants and eternally damned. Grendel resents men because God blesses them but will never bless him. The bright lights and sounds of joy emanating from Hrothgar's magnificent mead-hall, Heorot, especially annoy the ogre.

The scop 's "Song of Creation" angers Grendel because it reminds him of the light and hope of God's creation and the loss he suffers because of Cain's sin. Grendel stomps up from the mere to devour Danes and rule nightly over Heorot as a form of revenge stemming from this envy.

Revenge serves as a motivating factor for several characters throughout the poem, initially stirring Grendel and his mother. Grendel seeks revenge upon mankind for the heritage that he has been dealt. He delights in raiding Heorot because it is the symbol of everything that he detests about men: their success, joy, glory, and favor in the eyes of God. Grendel's mother's revenge is more specific. She attacks Heorot because someone there killed her son. Although she is smaller and less powerful than Grendel, she is motivated by a mother's fury. When Beowulf goes after her in the mere, she has the added advantage of fighting him in her own territory. As she drags him into her cave beneath the lake, her revenge peaks because this is the very man who killed her son. Only Beowulf's amazing abilities as a warrior and the intervention of God or magic can defeat her.

Revenge also motivates the many feuds that the poet refers to and is a way of life — and death — for the Germanic tribes. Old enmities die hard and often disrupt attempts at peace, as the poet recognizes. Upon his return to Geatland, Beowulf (2020 ff.) speculates about a feud between Hrothgar's Scyldings and the Heathobards, a tribe in southern Denmark with whom Hrothgar hopes to make peace through the marriage of his daughter. Beowulf is skeptical, envisioning a renewal of hostilities. In fact, the Heathobards do later burn Heorot in events not covered by the poem but probably familiar to its audience. Another example of revenge overcoming peace occurs in the Finnsburh section (1068-1159).

Beowulf's final battle is the result of vengeance. A dangerous fire-dragon seeks revenge because a fugitive slave has stolen a valuable cup from the monster's treasure-hoard. His raids across the countryside include the burning of Beowulf's home. Beowulf then seeks his own revenge by going after the dragon.

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• Classical Literature - What Does Grendel Represent in the Epic Poem Beowulf?
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Grendel , fictional character, a monstrous creature defeated by Beowulf in the Old English poem Beowulf (composed between 700 and 750 ce ). Descended from the biblical Cain , Grendel is an outcast, doomed to wander the face of the earth. He revenges himself upon humans by terrorizing and occasionally devouring the warriors of the Danish king Hrothgar. Beowulf, a warrior and headman of the Geats (a Swedish tribe), engages him in combat and mortally wounds him. Grendel’s horrible mother avenges her son’s death but is also defeated and killed by Beowulf. Many critics have seen Grendel as the embodiment of the physical and moral evil of heathenism. Beowulf’s struggles to overcome the monster are thought to symbolize Anglo-Saxon England’s emerging Christianity. The 20th-century American writer John Gardner told the story of Beowulf from Grendel’s point of view in Grendel (1971).

The Question of Race in Beowulf

J.R.R. Tolkien’s seminal scholarship on Beowulf centers a white male gaze. Toni Morrison focused on Grendel and his mother as raced and marginal figures.

Most readers of Beowulf  understand it as a white, male hero story—tellingly, it’s named for the hero, not the monster—who slays a monster and the monster’s mother. Grendel, the ghastly uninvited guest, kills King Hrothgar’s men at a feast in Heorot. Beowulf, a warrior, lands in Hrothgar’s kingdom and kills Grendel but then must contend with Grendel’s mother who comes to enact revenge for her son’s murder. Years later, Beowulf deals with a dragon who is devastating his kingdom and dies while he and his thane, Wiglaf, are slaying the dragon. Crucially, Grendel is never clearly described, but is named a “grim demon,” “god-cursed brute,” a “prowler through the dark,” a part of “Cain’s clan.”

Indeed, Beowulf  is a story about monsters, race, and political violence. Yet critics have always read it through the white gaze and a preserve of white English heritage. The foundational article on Beowulf  and monsters is J.R.R. Tolkien’s “ Beowulf : The Monsters and the Critics. ” Yes, before and while writing The Lord of the Rings , Tolkien was an Oxford medieval professor who interpreted Beowulf  for a white English audience. He uses Grendel and the dragon to discuss an aesthetic, non-politicized, close reading of monsters, asking critics to read it as a poem, a work of linguistic art:

Yet it is in fact written in a language that after many centuries has still essential kinship with our own, it was made in this land, and moves in our northern world beneath our northern sky, and for those who are native to that tongue and land, it must ever call with a profound appeal—until the dragon comes.

Beowulf —which is written in Old English—was produced over a millennium ago and is set in Denmark. Learning Old English is on par with learning a foreign language. Thus Tolkien’s view on which bodies, fluent in this “native” English tongue, can read Beowulf, also offers a window into the politics of who gets to and how to read and write about the medieval past.

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Tolkien’s investment in whiteness does not just apply to his ideal readers of medieval literature. It also extends to the ideal medieval literature scholars . At the 2018 Belle da Costa Greene conference, Kathy Lavezzo  highlighted Tolkien’s role in shutting the Jamaican-born, Black British academic Stuart Hall out of medieval studies. Hall’s autobiography , Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands , describes a white South African gatekeeper. Tolkien was the University of Oxford Merton professor of English Language and Literature when Hall was a Rhodes scholar in the 1950s. Hall explains how he almost became a medieval literature scholar: “I loved some of the poetry— Beowulf , Sir Gawain and the Green Knight , The Wanderer , The Seafarer —and at one point I planned to do graduate work on Langland’s Piers Plowman .” However, according to Lavezzo, it was Tolkien who intervened in these plans: “But when I tried to apply contemporary literary criticism to these texts, my ascetic South African language professor told me in a pained tone that this was not the point of the exercise.”

This clashes with Tolkien’s friendlier image that has permeated popular culture, thanks to The Lord of the Rings . Through Tolkien’s white critical gaze, Beowulf as an epic for white English people has formed the backbone of the poem’s scholarship. To this day, there have only been a few black scholars of Anglo-Saxon studies to publish on  Beowulf . Mary Rambaran-Olm has reported on the many instances of black and non-white scholars being shut out of medieval studies. She recently explained at the  Race Before Race: Race and Periodization symposium what Tolkien did to Hall in light of her own decision to step down as second vice president of the field’s main academic society, citing incidents of white supremacy and gatekeeping. As a result of these incidents, studying Beowulf  has long been a privilege reserved for white scholars.

Ironically, Tolkien’s advocacy for a Northern, “native,” and white ideal readership contrasts with his own personal and familial histories. He spent his first years in South Africa . Though Tolkien’s biographers have claimed that his birth in Africa scarcely influenced him , scholarly critics have pointed out the structural racism in his creative work, particularly in The Lord of the Rings .  Additionally, he wrote an entire philological series, “ Sigelwara Land ” and “ Sigelwara Land (continued) ,” on the Old English word for “Ethiopia.” In this series, he explicates the connections between Sigelwara Land  and monsters by flattening the categories of black Ethiopians, devils, and dragons. He writes:

The learned placed dragons and marvelous gems in Ethiopia, and credited the people with strange habits, and strange foods, not to mention contiguity with the Anthropophagi. As it has come down to us the word is used in translation (the accuracy of which cannot be determined) of Ethiopia, as a vaguely conceived geographical term, or else in passages descriptive of devils, the details of which may owe something to vulgar tradition, but are not necessarily in any case old. They are of a mediaeval kind, and paralleled elsewhere. Ethiopia was hot and its people black. That Hell was similar in both respect would occur to many.

Tolkien’s work of empirical philology is a form of racialized confirmation bias that strips Ethiopia of any kind of connection to the marvels of the East, gems, or even his own fixation on dragons. He highlights Sigelwara  as a term related to black skin and its connections to devils and hell, framing Ethiopians within the same category as “monsters.” He has no qualms about consistently connecting the Ethiopians to the “sons of Ham,” and thus the biblical descendants of Cain, linking medieval Ethiopia with the justification for chattel black slavery. In fact, no part of the etymology ( nor any part of medieval discussions of Ethiopia ) discusses slavery. Tolkien would have read Beowulf’s  Grendel, who is linked to Cain, as a black man:

Grendel was that grim creature called, the ill-famed haunter of the marches of the land, who kept the moors, the fastness of the fens, and, unhappy one, inhabited long while the troll-kind’s home; for the Maker had proscribed him with the race of Cain.

Tolkien’s articles on Ethiopia and on Beowulf , all published in the 1930s, reveal that Tolkien likely interpreted Grendel as a black man connected to a biblical justification for transatlantic chattel slavery. Thus, Grendel was raced within the logics of Tolkien’s white racist gazer. However, his philological method is still seen as a non-politicized and non-personal form of “empirical” scholarship. His interest in solidifying white Englishness and English identity—as a chain of links from the premodern medieval past to contemporary racial identities—is a project that extended into multiple scholarly areas.

Over the last several years, Tolkien’s most circulated political stance has been his resistance to fascism as displayed in letters he wrote to a German publisher. He may have abhorred fascism and antisemitism, but he upheld the English empire’s white supremacy. He held racialized beliefs against Africans and other members of the English black diaspora.

Black scholars have been systematically shut out of Old English literature. If there is no critical mass of black intellectuals, writers, and poets who can talk back to the early English literary corpus and the large-looming white supremacist gatekeepers, then Toni Morrison’s Beowulf  essay might well be the first piece to do so. Because she writes about Beowulf , race, and how to read beyond the white gaze, her essay speaks back not only to Beowulf  but to the English literary scholarship that has left Anglo-Saxon Studies a space of continued white supremacist scholarship .

In Toni Morrison’s 2019 collection , The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations , we get the first revision of who should read Beowulf  and how race matters. In her essay, “Grendel and His Mother,” she explains:

Delving into literature is neither escape nor surefire route to comfort. It has been a constant, sometimes violent, always provocative engagement with the contemporary world, the issues of the society we live in… As I tell it you may be reminded of the events and rhetoric and actions of many current militarized struggles and violent upheavals.

As a black feminist reader , Morrison examines Beowulf  as political, current, for any  reader. Indeed, she opens by explaining that literary criticism is always performed through the lens of its moment, urging her readers to “discover in the lines of association I am making with a medieval sensibility and a modern one a fertile ground on which we can appraise our contemporary world.” Morrison’s  Beowulf interpretation highlights what other critics, following Tolkien’s lead, have deemed marginal. She decenters the white male hero, focusing instead on the racialized, politicized, and gendered figures of Grendel and his mother, who in Tolkien’s read would have been black. In his article “ Beowulf : The Monsters and the Critics,” his white male gaze concentrates on what these two “monsters” can do for Beowulf’s development as the white male hero of Germanic epic. Morrison, on the other hand, is interested in Grendel and his mother as raced and marginal figures with interiority, psyche, context, and emotion.

In Morrison’s interviews with Bill Moyers, Charlie Rose, and The Paris Review , she explains her literary method when she unpacks nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature—especially Faulkner, Twain, Hemingway, and Poe—and how white writers and critics hide blackness and race. Similarly, in Morrison ’s discussion about Willa Cather’s Sapphira and the Slave Girl , she exposes the power dynamics of whiteness in Cather’s novel. The novel describes the complicated relationship between a white and a black woman in which Cather’s white gaze forces not just unspeakable violence onto the black woman but also erases her name, context, and point of view. Similarly, Tolkien is not interested in Grendel or his mother’s racialized contexts, emotions, and reasons. He writes with the white gaze—Grendel and his mother are racialized props that help explain Beowulf’s conflicts, contexts, emotions, and reasons. Morrison’s sentiments about nineteenth-century American literature apply to white supremacist Anglo-Saxon Studies: “The insanity of racism… you are there hunting this [race] thing that is nowhere to be found and yet makes all the difference.”

Morrison analyzes Beowulf  through Grendel’s racialized gaze. She points out Grendel’s lack of back story:

But what seemed never to trouble or worry them was who was Grendel and why had he placed them on his menu? …The question does not surface for a simple reason: evil has no father. It is preternatural and exists without explanation. Grendel’s actions are dictated by his nature; the nature of an alien mind—an inhuman drift… But Grendel escapes these reasons: no one had attacked or offended him; no one had tried to invade his home or displace him from his territory; no one had stolen from him or visited any wrath upon him. Obviously he was neither defending himself nor seeking vengeance. In fact, no one knew who he was.

Morrison asks readers to dwell on Grendel beyond good versus evil binaries. She centers the marginal characters in Beowulf , who have not been given space and life in the poem itself. She forces us to rethink Grendel’s mother and Beowulf’s vengeance, writing:

Beowulf swims through demon-laden waters, is captured, and, entering the mother’s lair, weaponless, is forced to use his bare hands… With her own weapon he cuts off her head, and then the head of Grendel’s corpse. A curious thing happens then: the Victim’s blood melts the sword… The conventional reading is that the fiends’ blood is so foul it melts steel, but the image of Beowulf standing there with a mother’s head in one hand and a useless hilt in the other encourages more layered interpretations. One being that perhaps violence against violence—regardless of good and evil, right and wrong—is itself so foul the sword of vengeance collapses in exhaustion or shame.

Morrison’s discussion of Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and Beowulf is about violence and how it undoes all potential motivations, including vengeance. The final tableau  of Beowulf holding both the blood-covered sword of vengeance and Grendel’s mother’s head is about the corrosiveness of violence. For Morrison ,  the corrosive violence that eats through the sword of vengeance is that of whiteness.

Morrison goes further to unpack Beowulf  through the work of contemporary writers. She explains:

One challenge to the necessary but narrow expectations of this heroic narrative comes from a contemporary writer, the late John Gardner, in his novel, titled Grendel… The novel poses the question that the epic does not: Who is Grendel? The author asks us to enter his mind and test the assumption that evil is flagrantly unintelligible, wanton, and undecipherable.

Specifically, she discusses Gardner’s rethinking of Grendel’s interiority. She writes that Gardner tries to “penetrate the interior life—emotional, cognizant—of incarnate evil.” For Morrison, the poem’s most salient interpretation comes from reading it politically, cogently, and rigorously. She writes:

In this country… we are being asked to both recoil from violence and to embrace it; to waver between winning at all costs and caring for our neighbor; between the fear of the strange and the comfort of the familiar; between the blood feud of the Scandinavians and the monster’s yearning for nurture and community.

In Morrison’s analysis, Grendel has developed from being a murderous guest to Hrothgar’s Hall who kills for no reason, to becoming the central focus. This passage asks us to think about why Grendel would do what he did. Morrison understands him as dispossessed; his “dilemma is also ours.” She situates Grendel as kith and kin to her imagined critical reading audience—black women.

Morrison concludes with a meditation on complicity, inaction, and the politics of contemporary late fascism and democracy:

…language—informed, shaped, reasoned—will become the hand that stays crisis and gives creative, constructive conflict air to breathe, startling our lives and rippling our intellect. I know that democracy is worth fighting for. I know that fascism is not. To win the former intelligent struggle is needed. To win the latter nothing is required. You only have to cooperate, be silent, agree, and obey until the blood of Grendel’s mother annihilates her own weapon and the victor’s as well.

In other words, we can reread that scene as a statement about fascist violence and its self-destroying and gendered toxicity. Morrison has made reading Beowulf  raced, gendered, political; she has envisioned its interpretation through the centrality of a black feminist reading audience where politics matter and “democracy is worth fighting for.”

As Tolkien’s intellectual grandchild (my advisor was his student), I do not think it is accidental that Morrison’s critical voice reframes Beowulf  for the racialized, political now. Tolkien’s deliberate shut out of Stuart Hall means that we can only speculate about Hall as a critic of Beowulf , and we know that  Anglo-Saxon scholarship continues to shut out black and minority scholars. With Morrison, finally, I believe we can put Tolkien’s “Monsters and Critics” to bed and read Beowulf  anew.

Editors’ note: This essay has been updated to reflect the fact that while Tolkien may be considered South African by measure of his birthplace, he moved to England as a toddler .

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Beowulf vs Grendel Essay

The roles that Beowulf and Grendel played in the story were very easily deciphered. Beowulf being pure good, and Grendel being pure evil. One of the reasons of why the book “Beowulf” is so well known is because of the fact that it is one of the first stories of good vs. evil , or light vs. dark. In modern good and evil stories, there are super heroes with super powers. They use these powers for the good of the world and to help innocent people. In most cases there is a villain that oppose these super hero’s. They usually have powers as well but they use it for evil and wrongdoing. They usually face off and most of the time, the super hero wins over the villain. But none of these stories would have been here …show more content…

He has been chosen to protect the world from evil. When this story was made, the author intended for it to be clear that Beowulf is supposed to be the hero of the story. Grendel was the character that played the “villain” in the book. He killed innocent people for only the reason of that they were having a good time, and he wasn’t. He is pure evil and kills countless people for pretty much the fun of it. He was said to be able to pick up thirty men at a time. So no normal human could match his strength. In the book it’s very easy to understand that Grendel is pure evil. He is called “The Captain of evil”. It doesn’t get anymore obvious then that. Grendel is shown as a monster that cannot be stopped. He’s a powerful force that can run through anyone and everything. But not the Super Hero. He could never match the power of pure good. So when Grendel fought Beowulf, Beowulf tricked him in thinking he was asleep and as soon as Grendel got near him, Beowulf grabbed him. Once Grendel was grabbed by Beowulf, he immediately knew that he was up against a man like non other. He franticly tried to escape and run away. But the power of the hero and the good that ran through his veins was able to rip the arm from the evil beast. Then Grendel ran away and bled to death. It was made very clearly that Grendel was supposed to be the evil

Similarities Between Grendel And Beowulf

The novel Grendel, by John Gardner, gives the reader an inside look on the “monster… demon… [and] fiend” (Beowulf, 99) who, in Beowulf (translated by Burton Raffel), seems only capable of destruction, sneaking around in the night and killing soldiers off by the dozen. Grendel is a non-human entity who possesses human characteristics; no one truly knows who or what he is. He is monstrously huge, absurdly strong, and insatiable (he has been murdering for approximately twelve years). He is a “[monster] born of Cain, [a] murderous [creature]” (Beowulf, 105-106). He lives with his mother in a swampy marsh that is secluded by a “pool of firesnakes” who guard “the sunken door” to the strange world of humans (Grendel, 16). Beowulf does not provide any information of where he came from or any history about him, except that he is a pre-cursed, wicked being with no conscience. This seems like a biased assumption because the story

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Why Is Beowulf Still Relevant Today

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Chapter 1 Grendel Dialectical Journal

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Compare and Contrast How Grendel Is Portrayed in Grendel and Beowulf

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Compare And Contrast Beowulf And Grendel

The story of Beowulf is a heroic epic, chronicling the distinguished deeds of the great Geatish warrior, Beowulf, who travels across the seas to rid the Danes of the evil monster Grendel, who has been inflicting destruction and terrorizing the kingdom. Beowulf is glorified for his heroic deeds of ridding the land fiendish monsters and stopping the scourge of evil, while the monster, Grendel, is portrayed as a repugnant creature who deserves death for its evil actions. However, many have disagreed with such a simplistic and biased representation of Grendel and his role in the epic poem. John Gardner in his book, Grendel, sets out to change the reader’s perception of Grendel and his role in Beowulf by narrating the story through Grendel’s point of view. John Gardner transforms Grendel, once perceived as an evil fiend in Beowulf, into a lonely but intelligent outcast who is actually quite similar to humans, due to his intelligence capacity for rational thought and his real, and at times irrational emotions. Gardner portrays Grendel as a hurt individual and as a victim of oppression, ostracized from civilization. Although the two works revolve around the same basic plot,, the themes and characters in Beowulf and Grendel are often different and sometimes contradictory.

Two Different Philosophical Views in Grendel and Beowulf Essay

“Beowulf” and Grendel are two tales similar in many ways, yet different from each other. These stories are like a coin; you cannot have one side without the other. Just as the sides of a coin share the same coin, these stories share a similar plot, a setting, and tell of the same events. The sides of a coin also have differences as do “Beowulf” and Grendel. In the case of these two tales this difference is in their respective philosophical views.

Comparing Beowulf And John Gardner's

In Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, Grendel is nothing but an evil fiend that needs to be slain, “a fiend out of hell, began to work his evil in the world” (Heaney 9). Grendel is portrayed as an evil monster that has only been wreaking havoc and terrorizing a kingdom for an extended amount of time because it thrives on the pain of others. Seamus states, “Malignant by nature, he never showed remorse” (Heaney 10). Grendel is made out to appear as little more than a monster, “insensible to pain and human sorrow” (Heaney 11). He is portrayed to have little to no human qualities, to be the furthest thing from

Why Is Grendel Unhappy

Grendel is characterized as a lonely creature who is trying to figure out the meaning of life around him. Grendel is an unhappy soul because he feels useless in society and doesn’t want to accept his given role. Throughout the novel Grendel feels as if he has no friends and nobody else accepts him but his mother. Humans have always been a problem in Grendel’s life and they affect how he lives life each day. Grendel is not an evil creature, he is just unhappy because of the way he is treated. We should sympathize for Grendel because he is suffering on Earth and he does not know what to do about it. The author shows that Grendel is in a place where he needs love and does not get punished because he uses his emotion to escape from his punishment.

The World versus Grendel Essay

My point that Grendel’s pre-destined path of evil is proven in lines 1260-1276 where we learn the history of the bible story Cain and Abel, and see where Grendel’s roots lie. “And from Cain there sprang/ misbegotten spirits, among them Grendel, / the banished and accursed… (Lines 1265-1267). Once again I feel sympathy for Grendel because it seems he did not have a choice but to be the “enemy of mankind.” (Line 1275) Good could never come from these people of Cain because they fell from the grace of god, but it appears that Grendel never directly did anything to deserve this fate, he was a victim of circumstance and was trapped in his monstrous position. Grendel did not kill Abel, yet he suffers for Cain’s behavior.

Grendel's Monstrosity

Anyone who defends Grendel or his behavior is guilty of agreeing with a terrible crime and sin in the sight of many. Grendel had but one mission and one purpose: to terrorize and murder. He fulfilled it well.

Spide-Man and Macbeth: Heroes with Tough Decisions

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Essay about A Comparison of Beowulf and Grendel

Grendel, is thus seen as the descendant of an individual who epitomizes resentment and malice in Beowulf. The author states Grendel lives in exile and is seen as “mankind’s enemy”(Raffel, 22). Grendel is the representation of all that is evil and he is declared to be the “shepherd of evil and the “guardian of crime”(Raffel, 33) by the Danes in Beowulf. The author describes Grendel to be an evil, cruel, apathetic creature who’s pleasure lies in attacking and devouring Hrothgar’s men. The author describes Grendel’s malice by painting a gruesome picture of Grendel’s countless attacks on the mead hall in which he exhibits Grendel as a heartless, greedy, and violent being who mercilessly murders the men at the mead hall by tearing them apart, cutting their body into bits and drinking the blood from their veins. The author describes Grendel’s greed by stating Grendel’s thoughts were as “quick as his greed or his claws”(Raffel, 21). He describes Grendel’s as having eyes that “gleamed in the darkness and burned with a gruesome light”, swift hard claws and great sharp teeth which paints a picture of Grendel’s frightening appearance in the reader’s mind. In contrast to the traditional story of Beowulf, Grendel in John Gardner’s novel, Grendel is not depicted as a monster but as an intelligent creature capable of human thought, feelings and speech. John Gardner portrays Grendel as an outcast

Similarities Of Grendel And Beowulf

There is a hero and a villain in every story, we have: Batman and The Joker, Spider-Man and The Green Goblin, Thor and Loki, and of course Beowulf and Grendel. In the epic “Beowulf” our two main characters are Beowulf the hero of the story, and Grendel the evil demon who terrorized the world. In the epic, Beowulf and Grendel are noticeably different, but at the same time alike in many ways. The people in the story may not have notice the similarities, but they could not be hidden from the peering eye of the reader. In the story Beowulf was was brave, while Grendel was cowardly, Beowulf was helpful, while Grendel only wanted to hurt people; in comparison, they were both unnaturally strong and very arrogant.

The Characters' Personalities in "Grendel" and "Beowulf" Essay

This way of thinking leads Grendel to be the assassin we know him as today.

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Essay On Grendel Vs Beowulf

Several differences can be seen throughout the old-English Beowulf (Heaney) and the modern-day film Beowulf and Grendel (Gunnarsson) due to the cultural difference between the Middle ages and Modern time. More details entered the film to appeal to a more modern audience that requires reason and details. The old English poem held no use for complexity to tantalize the reader. Additions that add complexity to Grendel’s character in Beowulf and Grendel include backstories and new characters. In Beowulf, the epic, it states, “Grendel was the name of this grim demon haunting the marches, marauding round the heath and the desolate fens; he had dwelt for a time in misery among the banished monsters, Cain’s clan, whom the Creator had outlawed and condemned as outcasts (Heaney, pg. 9).” This shows that, in Beowulf, Grendel was just seen as …show more content…

This being shown in the scene where Beowulf tries to fight Grendel but cannot understand his language so he asks the witch, “Why won’t he fight me?” and she replies, “why should he, you’ve done nothing to him.”(Gunnarsson) In our modernized society viewers require more complexity and are not satisfied with characters being classified as simply good and evil. People today know that not everything can be considered black and white. Complexity was added to Grendel’s character in the film due to the fact that, in Beowulf, the writer uses simplistic duality throughout the epic poem. The film modifies the simplistic duality used in the epic poem by adding a backstory to Grendel’s character. Instead of being seen as a monster committing senseless murders, he can be seen as compassionate, caring, and knowledgeable of his actions. The film shows his compassionate and caring side through his connection to the witch. In the film, the viewer can see that Grendel protects the witch from people who try to hurt her,

Beowulf's Grendel-Human Or Monster

He is portrayed in the poem as a horrendous beast with human characteristics, but looking closer to the text, he is a human out-casted and raised to be a monster. Although Grendel is written as a monstrous villain who kills with no remorse, he is actually a complex human with a repressed anger exploding in bursts. Grendel is often described in a negative way. He is reffered to as a demon in the text “from Beowulf”

Portrayal Of The Monster In Grendel Excerpt By John Gardner

Grendel the “Monster” Do not underestimate the power of a human being. Monsters are everywhere near and far. The sources that will be discussed are Beowulf (2007) film, Printed Cantos and textbook, and the Grendel Excerpt by John Gardner. The portrayal of Grendel in the movie differs greatly from the cantos and excerpt because in the readings he comes off as such a greedy monster, but in the movie he is lonely and in need of help.

Grendel's 'Main Themes In Beowulf'

In Grendel there is many different main themes in the story. They all share their own important part on how Grendel is view by the reader and the people in the story. Most of the main themes make you feel more sympathetic with Grendel; than you did in Beowulf.     One of the main themes is humans and monsters. At one part of the story Grendel overhears the harper talking about Grendel and goes into the mead-hall.

Compare And Contrast Grendel And Beowolf

Throughout John Garder’s novel and the poem Beowolf the reader can tell that Grendel is a complex character that does not relate much to anyone else in the novel or the poem. Grendel in Garder’s novel is also different compared to the Grendel in the poem Beowolf by many different standards. Grendel in Garder’s novel is more a complicated character then the Grendel in Beowolf because the novel is set in first person point of view, the reader can have a deeper understanding of Grendel in the novel, and there is more modern philosophy in Grendel the novel. The novel Grendel is all written in first person which gives a deeper understanding of how Grendel interprets what is happening and how he reacts too many of the conflicts that happen to him.

Existentialism In John Gardner's Grendel Vs. Beowulf

John Gardner’s wrote Grendel in a first point of view whereas, in Beowulf epic had Grendel in third point of view. Gardner’s novel has made a significant picture for Grendel than the epic. The good and evil personality has been the main conflict for both stories. However, Grendel in Gardner’s novel is confused how the universe goes but realized that there is some sort of pattern going on. Grendel is seeking to find the meaning of the life.

Beowulf Is A Motivating Character In Grendel

In Grendel the author shows us a very captivating character. Gardner is able to show himself misunderstood, confused yet a very different creature. By showing him this way, the author shows that there are more than 1 side to each story. This makes him be able to familiarize himself to the reader. Grendel has some very monster like qualities, but he is not violent and Grendel is a character who is capable of learning, thinking ,etc. and communicating.

Iago Vs Grendel Analysis

Readers can learn some things about Grendel in Beowulf but in order to dive deeper into the character and who he is, people go to the book Grendel. The book takes a closer look at Grendel and how he discovers the order and disorder of people and the world (Sanchez). Grendel is thought to symbolize the dark side of humanity, or the sins of man (Farrell). It’s easy for readers to sympathize with Grendel at points because he is a natural outcast of society. He is said to be the son of Cain and because of that he was labeled from day one (Sanchez).

Comparing Beowulf And Society In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Both authors paint a grotesque picture of their creations and how they both desire to destroy beauty; Aesthetic Iconoclasm, that is shared between the two figures. However, both authors present their monsters separate to one another in philosophy; with Grendel being a mindless savage and the Monster being more contemplative and questioning the nature of its own creation. ‘Monster’ characters have always been a target of both folk tales and pagan myths since the dawn of humanity, the very concept of a monstrous creature harkens back to the primal fear instinct of facing a dangerous predator that presents a danger to humanity. Grendel from Beowulf is the perfect example of this hysteria and

Essay On Grendel As A Monster In Beowulf

The common characteristics of what makes a monster have remained constant throughout society: evil, isolated, violent. Monsters have no regards for social normatives, and cause chaos and destruction wherever they go. Grendel is no exception. In Beowulf, Grendel manifests every characteristic of a stereotypical monster. He is considered inherently evil, and is an outcast; he roams alone and commits devilish atrocities whenever he pleases.

Internal Conflict In Grendel

This is the beginning of Grendel falling directly into the role that the dragon said he would need to fill. Grendel’s murderous tendencies completely reflect the monstrous side of his personality and the more he kills the more he grows insane, separating from rational, humanistic thought. “I am swollen with excitement, bloodlust and joy and a strange fear that mingle in my chest like the twisting rage of a bone-fire... I am blazing, half-crazy with joy” (168). It is clear that, by the time Beowulf arrives, Grendel has embraced the fact that he is required to be evil, despite the fact that he previously claimed he would oppose that destiny.

Essay Comparing Beowulf And Grendel

Grendel in both stories is described as a vicious "Monster", but is viewed differently. The character of Grendel, in the novel by John Gardner, portrays a different visualization than that of Grendel in the epic poem Beowulf. In the novel the story is told in first person point of view which gives Grendel human qualities while Grendel in Beowulf is told in third person point of view not giving Grendel his standpoint. In both works, the authors give two different perspectives of Grendel. Grendel in the novel is not seen as a "Monster", but as a human that has emotions and is very sympathetic about everything that comes his way.

Beowulf Compare And Contrast Essay

The poem and movie of “Beowulf” are very different and they are also sort of similar. There are a lot more differences between the two than you would expect and while some of them are minor differences others are drastically different. Most movies are very different from the book they are made from. The biggest differences between the movie and poem were the three battles. The three battles have drastic differences.

Point Of View In Grendel And Beowulf

Thus allowing the reader to interpret the tone better because of how Grendel expresses his feeling. On the other hand, Beowulf gives the reader a generalization of how he sees society. Plain and simple. Beowulf only sees the world as good and evil, black and white, there is no gray area, causing the tone to be bland and boring due to no detail or unexpected turns. Beowulf overlooks society as a horrible place that only " the vicious raids and ravages of Grendel, his long and unrelenting feud, nothing but war...young and old were hunted down by the death shadow" (line 151-160).

Compare And Contrast Beowulf Movie And Book

The movie Grendel starts off attacking Herot Hall, but in the textbook he started attack villagers. In the textbook, Grendel mother was considering hideous; however, in the movie she was a gorgeous monster. Accordingly, to the textbook version Beowulf’ death was extremely not dramatic. The movie and poem Beowulf share many differences, for the attack of Herot Hall, death of Grendel and his mother, also tragedy death of

Argumentative Essay On Beowulf And Grendel

Argument Essay: Beowulf and Grendel Many people have read or heard of the epic poem of Beowulf, which spins a tale of Grendel, the monster, attacking the admirable Danes and their king, Hrothgar. Some may not be as aware of a book titled Grendel written by John Gardner in 1971. Gardner’s book tells a completely different account of the more familiar tale of Beowulf, from the perspective of Grendel, the monster. The narrator from Grendel portrays a more plausible, powerful story than the excerpt from Beowulf by drawing the reader in with a more emotional viewpoint from the character Grendel, making him more relatable by giving him humanlike qualities, and clarifying why certain events took place in Beowulf.

More about Essay On Grendel Vs Beowulf

Home — Essay Samples — Business — Comparative Analysis — Beowulf and Odysseus: A Comparative Analysis of Heroic Archetypes

Beowulf and Odysseus: a Comparative Analysis of Heroic Archetypes

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Introduction, heroic qualities, societal roles, narrative arcs.

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