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Medieval european literature essay
Essays on the medieval world
Essays on the medieval world
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Do you really understand what a monster is or who the monster is? A monster could be anything or anyone. People think that monsters are just supernatural creatures and ugly and huge, but that is not exactly true. Everyday people could be monsters and sometimes they are the worst types of monsters. When you read “Beowulf”, you could say that Beowulf, Grendel, and Grendel’s Mother were all monsters in some way. Monsters are extraordinary or unnatural. Grendel was unusual because he lived in a swamp with his mom. He had scary claws and huge jaws that he used for deadly reasons. Grendel and his mother were capable of doing things that other humans and creatures couldn’t. Beowulf was very extraordinary. He was a man of great strength and mighty …show more content…
Grendel was a monster made of many different body parts. He had huge claws like a dinosaur and huge jaws like a shark. Grendel was scary in sight and he used is body to do terrible things to the people of Dane. The narrator explains, “The monster’s/Thoughts were as quick as his greed or his claws…”(34 -35) Monsters are people of inhuman and horrible cruelty or wickedness. Grendel was a master or destroying things and people. He once killed about thirty men just by smashing them and ripping them apart, while completely destroying the mead-hall Herot. The poem says, “Snatched up thirty men, smashed them/Unknowing in their beds and ran out with their bodies…”(37-38). Unlike Grendel, Grendel’s Mother was mischievous, rather than an assassin. She would lure the King into her layer and she would put a curse on that King. The King would be lost in how beautiful she was and be trapped. Beowulf was cruel for killing Grendel. Grendel meant a lot to his mother and she was furious about the situation. Beowulf destroyed their family and put a lot of fear into Grendel when they were fighting. Beowulf had intimidated his enemies and killed many different people and
“I wanted it, yes! Even if I must be the outcast,” (55). This is after Grendel has listened to the Shaper’s story about Cain and Abel. Grendel learns that he is the cursed descendant of Cain and is forever destined to be a monster. At first, he didn’t want to believe that is was true but after a while, he gladly accepted the role thus creating his own meaning. “I was Grendel, Ruiner of Meadhalls, Wrecker of Kings!” (80). This is when Grendel is experiencing his newfound invincibility to the humans and their weapons and he is tormenting them. After he visits the dragon in Chapter 5, Grendel has a renewed sense of confidence of who he is - which is a monster. In Chapter 6, he continues to terrorize the Danes and pursuing his monstrous desires. Grendel is acting upon his role as the monster because after speaking to the dragon, he realizes that nothing can stop
Our first character, Grendel, is an exceptionally diverse character. It is implied that in both book and poem, Grendel is a blood-thirsty monster. All Grendel does is go through meadhalls and kill the drunk, often asleep people. But when narrated through the eyes of Grendel, the true nature of this beast is discovered. The author of Grendel entails that Grendel is a depressed and misunderstood monster, restrained to the confinements of his own underwater cave. He is a lot like the monster in the book Frankenstein. Both Grendel and Frankenstein are born with no real purpose to life, going off of what they hear other people say and taking it as the truth. Both monsters, knowing that everyone detests them for being unattractive and different, retaliate by way of murder and mayhem. From the perspective of the people in the stories itself, Grendel is exactly how the narrator in the poem Beowulf makes him out to be. The people, or the thanes, of Hrothgar’s kingdom see Grendel as a demon from hell, representing all that’s evil in the world. He’s a supernatural creature and in this time period anything supernatural that wasn’t human was considered a spirit, a god, evil or, in Grendel...
Grendel as a character is very intelligent, he is capable of rational thought at all times. Because of this, at sometimes during the story I would forget Grendel is a monster, the way he acts in his thoughts and actions I would mistake him for a human; at times I was even feeling bad for Grendel because he is a very lonely person who tries to understand all of the meaningless of the world around him. Grendel can never get to close to
The fact having Grendel as the main character makes it even more interesting because is almost kind of unknown. I describe him as the unknown because you really do not know what he really is. At one point he is kind of confusing because he is both characterized as a human and a monster who kills and eats humans. How awful is that? Grendel can be scary but at the same time who feel sort of sorry for him when he describes being lonely with the desire of companion. For example, I felt kind of sorry for him because he is being alone in situations that seem kind of tough. But in the other hand Grendel eats humans and that is kind of scary. Although Grendel would eat humans, I do not blame him because that is what he was thought to do in a way. It’s like following the same step you are thought to do. That is Grendel’s case. He was not really thought it was wrong to do so, he was in a way confused and all he wanted to do was to understand his place in a potentially meaningless
It is true that Grendel is monstrous. He is not only a deadly enemy to Hrothgar and Herot, but to the Geats in general. Grendel seems to take his only pleasure from assaulting Herot and destroying the warriors inside. He is a bane to all those that live under Hrothgar's rule. They hate him. He is called the “enemy of mankind” (29) and rightly so. However, because of Grendel’s actions, they cannot see the other part of Grendel that makes him do the evil he does. Grendel, like the Angels before and the Geats soon after, is symbolic of displaced races/peoples and not simply a mindless monster. When Adam and Eve had children, they had two boys. Their names were Cain and Able. When Cain killed Able, God “banished him far from mankind” (29). From Cain came trolls, elves, monsters, and giants. Grendel is a descendant of Cain, so he shares Cain’s banishment. Cain may have been the first displaced person after Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden. Grendel shares his ancestor’s sentence. He is displaced not only from whatever land or wealth he would have if he were “human” but he is also displaced form God. It is this displacement that causes Grendel to destroy. Since he cannot “approach the throne” (28) like other people, he chooses to try to destroy the throne, because he has “no love for him (God)” (28). This is the main reason Grendel is symbolic of displaced peoples. After all, he is a direct descendent of the very first displaced people, Adam and Eve. However, unlike Adam and Eve, Grendel is doomed to an eternity of banishment from God’s light because of Cain’s sin against his brother. That is why Grendel kills, because he cannot be in the light, because he is at war with God. Grendel is not only banished from God’s light, but from the light in general. Throughout the text, references are made to Grendel as “the walker in darkness” (36), and “the dark-death shadow” (29). This kind of imagery further shows how displaced Grendel has become. The text refers to him as a “creature deprived of joy” (36). The text also refers to Grendel’s dwelling as “his joyless home” (37). It is no wonder Grendel was considered so monstrous. Like other displaced peoples, he has nowhere that is a refuge to him, because he has been removed from his home, or in Grendel’s case, the love of the Lord.
However, this stranger is unlike any human Grendel has ever met before. When Grendel attacks the mead hall that night, he discovered that this stranger is not only much stronger and smarter than he imagined, he is also much more cruel. “He’s crazy. I understand him all right, make no mistake. Understand his lunatic theory of matter and mind, the chilly intellect, the hot imagination, blocks and builder, reality as stress” (Gardner 172). This insane man is actually the hero Beowulf. However, in this story, Beowulf is portrayed as one of the worst humans of them all. He cannot just kill Grendel, he has to see Grendel suffer up to his death. He forces Grendel to sing and humiliates him in front of the other men. This unearthly cruelty is what finally took down Grendel. But it also shows that even though Grendel was physically the monster, that he was not the worst creature on earth. Grendel was not as cruel as Beowulf; in the end, man becomes the monster and the monster becomes the
In the poem “Beowulf,” Grendel’s mother, a monstrous creature, is one of the three antagonists Beowulf, the main character, fights against. The battle against Grendel’s mother appears to be the strangest of the three battles. The main reason for its strangeness is that Grendel’s mother is the mother of the monster Grendel, who was killed by Beowulf in the first battle. Another reason for its strangeness is that Grendel’s mother is the only female-type creature. An alternative reason for this strangeness in the battle is due to the fact that Grendel’s mother is not a true monster, aside from her physical form. Through the explanation of kinship, the understanding of the missing words from the original text, and the comparison of Grendel’s mother to other mothers in the poem, specifically Welthow and Hildeburh, it can be established that the intentions of Grendel’s mother are not monstrous even though she has the appearance of a monster.
A monster is a creature that deviates from normal or acceptable behavior; a threatening fore; something of unnatural deformity, malevolence, and cruelty. A hero, on the other hand, is one idealized for courage, bravery, and strength. While fusing the evermore different qualities of both would seem impossible, John Gardner’s Grendel does just that. Gardner creates an ambiguous character that possess aspects of both a monster and a hero – it is a force of evil, yet admired; it causes pain yet urges sympathy; and it is of irregular ugliness yet beloved. Its name is Grendel. Grendel is an illustration of a “shadow stalker” who becomes submissive to its own misunderstanding and isolation, hungering for discovery, and claiming some rightful place in an ambiguous world.
In any classic story about heroes and villains, the monsters involved are often characterized as the evil ones and, consequently, receive no justice under the law. Throughout the epic story Beowulf, the hero of the story encounters three monsters that are threats to society: Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon. The monsters in Beowulf are quickly targeted and destroyed because of the harm they cause to society. However, upon further examination of the monsters and the motives for their actions, the reader can view the monsters not as the cutthroat villains they may initially appear to be, but perhaps as victims of society. In today’s society, murderers and robbers are also portrayed as “monsters” because of the atrocious crimes
The poet does not expose Grendel’s name for several lines, giving the audience negative adjectives to describe the character (36). Grendel is conceived by two “banished monsters” born of Cain (105-106). Grendel was so vicious he drove all the warriors away from Heorot, and “for twelve winters, season of woe, / the lord of the Shieldings suffered under/his load of sorrow” (147-149). Although ...
GRENDEL is a monster who is a descendant of Cain, the brother-slayer. For twelve years, Grendel attacks Heorot and kills Danish people: "he wanted no peace with any of the men of the Danish host" (Norton, 29). Hrothgar, the Danish king, doesn't have enough strength to fight Grendel. Only Beowulf can rescue the Danes from the monster's attacks.
Time after time he charges into Herot Hall, slaughtering the warriors like sheep, and feasting on them. Denmark trembles in fear and grief as Grendel terrorizes their land. The people live in fear for their family and friends. Grendel is the Anglo-Saxon embodiment of what is dark, terrifying, and threatening. Grendel is an enemy of God. He can not know God’s great love. He is a powerful ogre that resides in the dark, wet marshes. He is a shadow of death that grows impatient with the Danes. He delights in their slaughter. No crime or savage assault would quench his thirst for evil. For evil can never be quenched. Grendel is a shepherd of evil and a guardian of crime. Grendel exhibits his envy towards the warriors as Cain did to his brother. Jealousy breed loneliness.
In the original Epic poem many of the monsters in the story represent different experiences throughout someone 's life. The first monster, The Demon Grendel, is used to represent daily adversities someone would have in their
He was a powerful cold hearted monster that slayed individuals in a blink of an eye with no remorse for his actions. Grendel was both monster and man, one of the families of Cain. Like Cain himself, Grendel was said to be “God-cursed,” and his status as an outcast, cut off from the community of men, makes him seem curiously forlorn, “ spurned and joyless.” There were many other battles that Grendel fight but the most significant one, was when the Prince of Kings didn’t want to send his army in to fight Grendel, so a dragon came forth and brutally defeated him in battle. Grendel had finally been
The author of Beowulf demonizes Grendel by depicting him as being purely a monster as compare to John Gardner who depicts Grendel not as a savage monster but as an intelligent being who has human like qualities and characteristics. In the traditional story Grendel is depicted as a blood-thirsty fiend driven by his greedy animal instincts. ...