Beowulf Monsters

The monsters of Beowulf live within us. Grendel, his beastly mother, and the hoarding dragon have frightened each and every human from the Stone Age to the era of the internet. All of our technology and globalization cannot banish them. Audiences worldwide are both repulsed and attracted to tales of their evil. They are Anglo-Saxon manifestations of primal human fears, those of the marauding predator. But the genius of Beowulf is that the monsters represent more than archetypical spooks and scares; they are foils to the civilized human being.

Since the advent of art and writing, monsters have been at the forefront of human creation. From cave paintings of great beasts to the snake-haired gorgons of Greek myth, mankind has been fascinated by what frightens it. The horror genre is so eternally popular because it provokes a very intimate reaction from the audience. Just as comedy is met with laughter and tragedy with tears, horror is met with fear. Horror has taken its place not only as an artistic and literary medium but also as a facet of society. Monsters and fear motivate and inspire just as much as heroes and hope, shaping cultures and religions along lines of light and dark. One must look no farther than the skeletal depictions of Hell and its beasts in medieval manuscripts to see the social weight terror can wield. The pious medieval citizen was motivated equally by the feverish desire to stay out of hell as he was to gain access to heaven.

It’s no secret that monsters have always been incredibly popular in fiction. The question one must then ask is “Why are monsters so scary”? The answer is more scientific than social. Monsters are terrifying because our brains tell us that they are. Evolution has hardwired our brains to ...

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...t as slain, adhering to all their culture’s norms, by a creature that followed none of them. The idea of being burnt alive or consumed while sleeping by a beast that epitomized everything your society abhorred was terrifying to the Anglo-Saxons. It would be an insult to their society, their very way of life, to let the monsters win.

In the end, however, the forces of good triumph. Beowulf and his followers defeat the evil beasts through honest combat, proving that the warrior’s path is always the highest. But that does not change the fact that the monsters remain terrifying. Born from our most basic and primal of fears, fictional monsters have grown to become a key component of the social and spiritual lore of the human race. In every story, in every time, there will always be the Grendel outside of Herot, the predator in the darkness, the monster under your bed.