The forms of literary evil

What exactly is evil? Is it a tangible object or just an unperceivable idea? There are many theories to these two simple questions anywhere from a physical evil presence to one’s personal concept of what is evil to them. In literature, evil can take many different forms, including physical evil, inner evil, and a combination of the two. No matter what mode it takes though, the presence of evil in literature has always been influential in the plot and always has the same ending: death.

One of the most distinct and obvious forms of evil in literature is physical evil and this takes the forms of many things from the Grim Reaper to monsters. The latter of the two is what we see in the Anglo-Saxon heroic story, Beowulf. In this story we see not just one physical evil, but three: Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon. All of these creatures were described in their own terms, yet all of their nicknames show that they are pure evil. First we have Grendel who was named the “fiend out of hell” (Heaney 9) and also the “corpse maker” (Heaney 21). While Grendel’s mother was called the “monstrous hell-bride” (Heaney 89) and the dragon was called the “nightmarish destroyer” (Heaney 191). These few nicknames barely scratch the surface of describing how truly evil each of these creatures was, yet even though they were pure evil they were still important to the story. Without these evil creatures Beowulf would not be the hero that we know him to be because he would not have anyone to defeat in battle. It is also because of these different physical evils that we get to the end goal of all evil: death. In this case of Beowulf it comes with the death of all the monsters at the hands of Beowulf in various ways, including ripping off Grendel’s arm...

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...Throughout the literary eras we can see stories containing anything evil from monsters to murderers to even ordinary men. However, no matter what type of evil these stories contain whether it is physical like the monsters in Beowulf, internal like the men in the Pardoner’s Tale or a combination of both like the witches and ambition in Macbeth, it is still greatly influential in the plot of the story and can only lead to the one end result of evil: death.

Works Cited

Chaucer, Geoffrey. "The Pardoner's Tale." Chaucer's Works. Ed. Walter W. Skeat. Vol. 4. London: U of Oxford, 2007. N. pag. Web. 24 Apr. 2014

Heaney, Seamus. Beowulf. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999. Print.

"Macbeth: Entire Play." Macbeth: Entire Play. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2014.

Shmoop Editorial Team. "Macbeth Themes." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 18 Apr. 2014.