Grendel's Nature And Evil In Beowulf

In the beginning of Grendel, Grendel’s feelings towards the humans are more or less indifferent. He attacks humans from the mead hall but this is only in order to feed himself, he doesn’t perform needless killings unlike the humans do. Soon Grendel comes in contact with the Shaper where he hears him performing a son. Grendel is negatively

Before Grendel, everything was serene. One day that all changed when Grendel came into the picture. “So Hrothgar’s men lived happy in his hall…Til that monster stirred, that demon, that fiend.” (pg.41 L.) This gives the reader a bad feeling that Grendel

Grendel was a descendant of Cain who was punished for killing his brother Abel. Since Grendel was born from evil he could never be happy which angered him when he heard all the people in Herot having a good time. Grendel was always sinning by murdering every night. In lines 1-2 it backs up my stating of Grendel being evil it says “A powerful monster, living down in the darkness, impatient.”

Again, the humans place Grendel in a position opposing them, as if expecting him to be a horrible, murderous creature. Hrothgar’s tribe condemns him to a villainous role. Additionally, the dragon encourages the acceptance of this villainous role by suggesting “You [Grendel] improve them, my boy! Can’t you see that yourself? You stimulate them! You make them think and scheme. You drive them to poetry, science, religion, all that makes them what they are for as long as they last. You are, so to speak, the brute existent by which they learn to define themselves,”(Gardner 72). The dragon confirms Grendel’s expected role in relation to the humans, and instills in him that that is his place in the world. So before Grendel can be labeled “evil” by the readers, they must first understand that he is simply operating under the label given by Hrothgar’s town, and acting in response to the hatred and rejection he is earlier shown. Grendel is not an evil being, he is merely a creature who is judged early on, and established as an enemy before anything is really known about

In the story Beowulf, the character Grendel is highly misunderstood. Grendel was born in the wild marshes outside of Herot. Being raised in such harsh conditions, Grendel grew to hate the Danes and God. As a descendant of Cain, he was banished as a small child and forced to live in exile with his mother. 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.

In the beginning of the story Grendel doesn’t understand why his mother and he have to hide from the men. He has no one to talk to and feels like his mom hates him because she is always ignoring him and doesn't talk much. Grendel feels miserable as if there was no point in living. "The world is a pointless accident . . . I exist, nothing else." (70) Grendel is showing some sort of depression, as if there was no meaning for him in the world. "The monster" has a similar feeling towards the world and how he feels. "The monster" also feels like he is being hated by his creator/father. He feels miserable among all because of how different he is. "who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet my creator detest and spurn me." (69) In this quote from the story "the monster", who is

To begin with , Grendel seemed to be a creature of free will, there are a number of things to take into consideration ,the first and most important being a matter of his birth .Being born a monster put him at a disadvantage where his appearance was put before almost everything else . Grendel was often judged on his appearance as seen with the reactions of almost everyone who saw him . He often tries to choose his own fate but seems to hold

Equally important, the innocence Grendel had as a child provide an outline for his lack of baneful intentions. One act of innocence that has shown through Grendel’s entire life, from childhood until death, was a tendency to call for his mother when in danger of any kind. Putting this into perspective, shortly before the death of Grendel, on page one-hundred and seventy, he calls for his mother for the final time. “Mama!” he is heard bellowing. Another key point of Grendel’s dependance on his mother can be found on pages eighteen and nineteen. On these pages, he repeatedly begs for his mother to come and rescue him as he finds stuck in two trees and injured. “Please mama please!” Grendel whines. Grendel also speaks, on page sixteen, of exploring

However, the villagers never made it clear if this creature is only viewed for her “beauty”, or her “deceitful nature”. Like Grendel's character, one knows that society only judges Grendel himself off of what they see on the outside, rather than the inside. So if we compare this to the mother, we know that what men said of her can not be entirely held to the truth. The reason is because, like Grendel, those humans are judging her off of looks, rather than knowing the other half of the story. Since the audience is able to see this second side through Grendel, we are overall the ones who are to decipher the nature of Grendel's

Grendel takes his loss out on the people, by hurting them. His actions speak for his words, “two nights later I went back. I was addicted. The Shaper was singing the glorious deeds of the dead men, praising war. He sang how they'd fought me. It was all lies” (Gardner 54). It is obvious Grendel suffers the physical pain of being alone, and he gets addictive to hurting others due to his sadness. The more Grendel hears about people getting along he hates them and wants to fight them, because he can not have that. Grendel actions speak louder than his words when conveys his anger against the world. In the quote Grendel portrays this is what he does when he says, “It's all I have, my only weapon for smashing through these stiff coffin-walls of the world” (Gardner 123). Grendel’s only thing he has is his power to beat things up and kill things that are happy unlike him. He is an upset person who is jealous of people that are

When Grendel was younger, he was a curious creature who was intrigued but terrified of the outside world. The first person viewpoint of the story allows us to see how the way the humans treated Grendel took away his innocence and isolated him. Grendel’s innocence when he was younger is shown throughout the beginning of the story, “ One morning I caught my foot in the crack where two trees joined. “Mama!” I was out much later than I'd meant to be” (Gardner 18). Grendel is out exploring the world and got his foot caught in a branch and is crying for his mother. Seeing this event from

Grendel, when first meeting the wise and old dragon learned how the humans felt when he had confronted them. The Dragon explained that the fear is "how they feel when they see" him (Gardner 60). Grendel felt a little shame, so for the first time, considered how they, the humans, must have felt after seeing a strange creature. Out of guilt, he wants to no longer wants scare them for pleasure or for sport; he only wants to eat the occasional few, so they will not starve from overpopulation. His brief thoughts and consideration of the human 's feeling reveal how sensitive and "humane" he really was. Furthermore, early in the novel, Grendel learns of a man, known as the Shaper, who sings to entertain the folks in the Mead Halls. The Shaper sings of all sorts of stories and myths to give the people hope of something greater in the next life. He also sang of Grendel 's kind, which is "the terrible race God cursed" (Gardner 51). Grendel desperately wanted to believe this; he wanted to be part of the cursed creatures that are offsprings of Cain. This may give him some sort of purpose in life. Additionally, the human that he had a "relationship", which that affected him the most, was with Hrothgar 's wife, Wealhtheow. Grendel had seen Wealhtheow when her brother, Hrothgar 's rival, wanted to make peace, so he offered Wealhtheow as his peace offering. There was no real relationship that developed between them, but, like with the Shaper, Grendel got obsessed. Her beauty made him temporarily stop the slaughter of innocent humans. Her presence made him rethink about what he was doing. He felt that she was on a higher class and was greater than himself. All he wanted, at least for that moment, was to do anything to please her. His whole psyche changed for, and he began to stalk her constantly because he was hypnotized by her beauty.

This time however, he is swept away by a person name the Shaper, who Grendel is ultimately scared of, because of the fact that the shaper is very good at changing the view of people very easily. During this same period, Grendel started to become more violent as well, first by attacking the humans. Grendel didn’t like the way Hrothgar lived and made the Mead Hall and in response, Grendel started to attack it at night. He killed anyone and everything that came into his sight, and even ate the humans. Grendel now became a real threat to the humans, which inevitably changed his status from sinister to pure

To begin, when Grendel is first introduced he is alone, watching and casting questions towards a ram and the sky, however he receives no answer. This is a first look into the mindset of this descendent of Cain, Grendel has no one to speak to. Later on, when his mother is introduced, it is revealed that she is incapable of verbally speaking with her son. This lack of communication creates a canyon between Grendel and his mother, one that no bridge can cover. There is no mother or God to guide or teach him the ways of socialization, and so, he is isolated; watching the lives of others through a crack in a wall. He is, as the shaper sings, “The terrible race cursed by God”. (Gardner 51) Similar to how Grendel was abandoned, the Monster of Frankenstein was dealt a similar fate. From the moment the Monster opened his eyes, his creator refused and rejected him. Dr. Victor Frankenstein had created a

This reinforces the idea that Grendel’s mother is also a monster, since put in the same position as the prior one. The two monsters, Grendel and his mother are also associated with the night as a time for action. This reinforces their animal-like behavior, and the monstrosity of their actions because they are not giving fair warning to the humans. The monstrosity of Grendel is also seen through his savagery when killing the men. He is carnivorous and feeds on human flesh. He does not seem to have a limit when killing “(…) greedy and grim, he grabbed thirty men from their resting places and rushed to his lair, flushed up and inflamed from the raid, blundering back the butchered corpses” (ll.120-125). Finally, Grendel does not seem to have emotions about those he kills, he is "insensible to pain and human sorrow” (ll.119-120) and he never showed remorse”(l.137). By his beast-like physical appearance, as well as his gruesome actions and his lack of emotions, the monstrosity of Grendel becomes evident throughout the