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The similarities of beowulf and grendel
What is the significance of grendel in beowulf
Similarities between beowulf and grendel
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The world is a big secretive place full of wrongness, hate, evilness, greed, and bloodlust. At the beginning humans were scared of the unknown. Humans were scared of theses feelings that are decaying hands reaching to destroy. To counterpoise this fear humans wrote about that the unknown as foreign monster causing havoc and ending with a untainted Hero killing this immoral substance an example is Beowulf. Beowulf is the first english tale written down however Grendel by John Gardner reveals Grendel a self pitying monster side of the story; “Poor Grendel will hang here and starve to death and no one with ever miss him!” He is the antagonist in both Grendel and Beowulf. Gardner conveys that Grendel is reflection of the his surrounding humans …show more content…
neighbors emotions such as fear, bloodlust, and hate. Grendel learns emotions every time he interacts with humans.
His world was made up his shadow, imaginary friends, the clandestine eyes, and his mother. When Grendel has his foot trap in a tree his world is shattered. “ All at once, as if by sudden vision, I understood that the world was nothing,” because his mother was not there as soon as the accident happened As a result of his mother’s tardiness he meets the humans for the first time. At first Grendel and the humans were friendly; the king ordered a pig to be delivered so Grendel could eat but alas “the king snatched an ax form the man beside him and, without any warning, hurled it at me (Grendel). The king throw the ax because Grendel scared the king and his man. Teaching Grendel what it like to be scared end with scaring Grendel. Throughout the novel from that point Grendel is either being the scarer or scaree. The last time Grendel scared is when the stranger catches Grendel killing men in the hall. “It’s a trick! His eyes are open, were open all the time”, the stranger from Geats gives the fatal wound to Grendel by ripping his arm off. Between the first and last time Grendel is scared, he terrorizes Heather's kingdom satisfying his need for to scare and …show more content…
blood. Bloodshed is a result of war.
War is key factor in Grendel, there is the war between kingdoms and groups, the war between Grendel and man, and the war between Grendel and himself, which all had the same outcome blood. Grendel learns of bloodlust though the man and how destructive it is. “ I was sickened, if only at the waste of it: all they killed-cows , horses, men- they left to rot or burn.” Grendel is disgusted by the man however, he goes to the heathhall killing for the first time and finding the bliss in the blood because Grendel learned what his and the shaper’s purpose is. “I fled with the body to the woods, heart churning- boiling like a flooded ditch- with glee and I felt a strange, unearthly joy;” Grendel infatuated with his bloodlust that he wants he self to bleed. Grendel cried, “Seize me! Seize me to you foul black bowels and crush my bones! Clawing my flesh, I fled.” The only things Grendel will not kill is deer, the Shaper, and the queen Wealtheow. Grendel would not kill deer because cows had more meat and were easier to kill. He loved Shaper and the queen and could not kill them however, he hates them the most, more than
man. Grendel hates everything and complains about everything. “Him (sky) too I hate, the same as I hate theses brainless budding trees, these battling birds. Ah, the unfairness of everything.” However, what he hates the most is the Shaper, the queen Wealtheow, Mankind,and himself. Grendel hates the shaper because of hates the way the shaper used to made him feel. “My mind aswim in ringing phrases, magnificent, golden, all of them. He (Shaper) reshapes the world.” Grendel hates Wealhtheow because of her beauty because it “tore me apart”. He hates Mankind because when they over react when their scared. When man first meet Grendel and Man attacks Grendel. Man kill without remorse which Grendel saw with war between groups. Grendel hates himself because he has the attributes of the shaper, the queen, and Man. Grendel and the shaper both shape mankind, the shaper with his words and Grendel with his killing. After learning this from the dragon Grendel hates the shaper. Grendel and the queen were not afraid of the king and saw all the falses of the king. “The queen put her hand on Hrothgar's bare shoulder as he slept and looked at him thoughtfully, exactly as Hrothgar had looked at her and at his people. She held the naked, bony king as if he were the child.” The queen could not be afraid of a old man who she held as a child. Both times when Grendel is scared of the human's actions Grendel called them crazy and lunatics and Grendel bleeds. Grendel kills without remorse like man. “I move from bed to bed and destroy them all, swallow every last man.” Grendel know he is not a good man (“ Not, of course, that I fool myself with thoughts that I’m more noble. Pointless, ridiculous monster crouched in shadows, stinking of dead men, murdered children, martyred cows.”) however, he does not think he is as destructive as the humans. “I have my dark side. You have your dark side. From the second that we have a brain, there are things that are not right - we are human beings with all these illusions and complexes and everything”-Marjane Satrapi. As Satrapi said humans all have dark sides, most try to live life in the light but many times fall into the never ending pit of hopeless temptation some a second, others never see the light again. In Grendel by John Gardner highlights darker emotion and actions that are not accepted in society by showing Grendel a monster's point of view and show that Grendel is like humans around him. Gardner conveys that Grendel is reflection of the his surrounding humans neighbors emotions such as fear, bloodlust, and hate.
“The monster’s thoughts were as quick as his greed or his claws: He slipped through the door there in the silence snatched up thirty men, smashed them…” (Raffel Lines 34-37) In other words, Grendel is characterized as a monster whose only desire is to kill. However, the humans chose to forget their beginning encounters with Grendel and don’t realize that they are the true cause. When Grendel tries to communicate with the humans because they speak the same language, he is repelled by the Danes. “The harper broke off, the people screamed. Drunken men rushed me with battle-axes. I sank to my knees, crying, “Friend! Friend!” (Gardner 52) In other words, Grendel wants to be friends with the humans but they immediately judge him based on his appearance and reject him. This causes Grendel now have become isolated from both the humans and animals. This isolation leads to Grendel to start killing the humans as a form of interaction. Sadly like with animals, the only form of communication with the humans Grendel will receive is through killing them like the Grendel we see in Beowulf. Overall, due to Grendel being surrounded by humans who misjudge him, he is motivated by isolation in which the only attention he will get is from killing
Grendel, as a character, has a much more complex identity than just a monster and a human. Some, such as Ruud, classify him as a mixture of three different characteristics, but alone, they tend to conflict with each other. By making the connection that Grendel represents immorality, the previous idea makes more sense, while simultaneously incorporating more aspects of the character into the analysis. In either case, Grendel represents much more than meets the eye, and provides a fascinating insight into
the men as the "beasts" and Grendel as the victim. & nbsp; Another aspect of the humans in the story that Grendel defines is their concept of a hero. Not only does he allow for heroes to exist he gives them their purpose in life. Grendel is the monster in the darkness. that every loyal thane would defend his king against. Without Grendel this unique situation would not exist. On the other hand, Grendel has the ability to humiliate and cause a man to be named a coward. He does. this to none other than Unferth. Unferth is treated like a hero because he would defeat the "monster" Grendel, or die trying. When Grendel does not. allow him to complete this task he is shamed by his fellow thanes. Grendel realizes that by killing the man he will be defining him as a hero in the eyes of the humans. Considering the way Grendel was treated by Unferth. and others like him, it becomes easy to sympathize with him extracting this.
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...
Since the beginning Grendel is very confused with why he can’t talk or get along with people or animals. He starts off wandering through the forest when he gets caught in a tree. Grendel cries out for his mom but is disappointed to be without her arrival. He later encounters a bull that nearly kills him but instead ends up wounded. Grendel could not communicate with the animal and out of this encounter he perceives life in a nihilistic way. After waking up from his sleep humans wearing armor surround him and believed him to be a tree spirit. Grendal tried to speak to them but again he had failed to do so. Finding out he wasn’t, they became hostile but fled after hearing Grendel's mother.
Although Grendel is depicted as a hideous bloodthirsty beast because he eats the Danes at Heorot continuously, he has some characteristics of a human gone wild. Grendel possesses the ability to feel human emotions such as envy and fear. When the Danes were having a feast in Heorot, Grendel “had dwelt for a time in misery among the banished monsters, Cain’s clan, whom the creator outlawed and condemned as outcasts”(104-106). He feels envy towards the Danes for making him an outcast of society. He was jealous of the Danes that were having a great time together while he had to live a life of misery alone. Grendel feels fear as well as envy because “he was overwhelmed, manacled tight by the man who of all men was foremost and strongest in the days of this life”(787-789). During the battle between Grendel and the hero Beowulf, Grendel was unprepared for Beowulf’s fighting tactics. He, who usually is victorious after each attack in Heorot, did not expect to be defeated by Beowulf, which is shown because “his fingers weakened; it was the worst trip the terror-monger had taken to Heorot”(764-765). When Beowulf leaves his weapon and decides to wrestle Grendel, Grendel realizes that he is no match for Beowulf’s strength. He feared death just as human are afraid of death. An ordinary person would want to flee if he or she was being wrestled to the ground and about to die. Grendel felt like fleeing but Beowulf did not want to lose any opportunities to kill the villain and thus does the deed in one go. When he realizes that his end was near, “the dread of the land was desperate to escape, to take a roundabout road and flee to his lair in the fens”(761-763). Just as humans in their psychoanalytic development, Grendel had a fight or flight response. When he knew that he was going to die he immediately chose the flight response in which he could not do because Beowulf was much more powerful and aggressive. He does not let Grendel escape. Grendel’s pain is all the more acute because he is brought so close to mankind and yet always kept at an unbreachable distance from society.
There are many similarities and differences between the movie "Beowulf and Grendel", to the poem. Major differences between the movie and the poem would be Grendel himself. In the poem, he is described as an evil monster born from two demons. In the movie, Grendel is actually human, but known as a troll to the warriors and Danes. The poem doesn’t give the background of Grendel or show how the Danes killed his father and the possible reason of his revenge, like in the movie. If the witch, Selma, was not included in the storyline of the movie, the audience would not have known key information that she was used to show from more flashbacks. The witch gives more of an idea about Grendel’s past life that could have been the possibility to reasons for his actions. Some major similarities are the battles. Both epics include the battles between Beowulf and Grendel, as well as Beowulf and Grendel’s mother. The end results are the same, leading to their death, but the journey and process to the two tales are different.
Even if, at first, Grendel seems almost kind, and the reader is pleased with his character, he soon becomes more and more evil, and his actions bring about a feeling of uneasiness, to say the least. Before, the killing of people for no apparent reason disgusted Grendel. However, when he brings Unferth home, he kills the two guards "so I wouldn't be misunderstood" (90). Later, in probably the most disturbing scene of the book, we see how meaningless killing has become to Grendel. He brutally attacks the queen and is determined to kill her.
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
Grendel is born a neutral being, perhaps even good, but nevertheless, without hate. The transition which he undergoes to become evil is due to misunderstandings between himself and humans and also meeting with a dragon who is questionably evil. As a young “monster”, Grendel knew nothing other than the cave he lived in and his mother who could not speak any distinguishable language. He was a playful creature who seemed to be like a “bla...
Grendel then began to show even more human traits than before. He became envious their happiness and starting becoming the cruel one. He started torturing and killing humans quite frequently. He starts to enjoy being cruel during his first raid. “I felt a strange, unearthly joy. It was as if I’d made some incredible discover, like my discovery long ago of the moonlit world beyond the mere. I was transformed” (79). This kind of cruelness came easily to Grendel, not unlike the humans had watched for so long. Grendel slowly becomes more and less human. He starts to lose his humanity but shows off just how human he is. Grendel becomes what he hates the most, cruel and pointless. Though Grendel enjoys the human’s suffering, it only makes him feel worse. “I feel my anger coming back, building up like invisible fire, and at last, when my soul can no longer resist, I go up - as mechanical as anything else - fists clenched against my lack of will, my belly growling, mindless as wind, for blood” (Gardner 9). Grendel falls into the trap and start to enjoy the suffering of others. While this isn’t a problem at first, Grendel eventually realizes just how pointless this is. How pointless everything is. Grendel sees that the world doesn’t do anything for anyone. He won’t be given anything and he probably won’t ever be happy. As a result, Grendel learns to live with this hatred and continues
Grendel exhibits human feelings and characteristics in many ways. Although Grendel is a monster “forced into isolation by his bestial appearance and limited imagination” (Butts) he yearns to be a part of society; he craves companionship while he is isolated. With his “ear pressed tight against the timbers [of Hart]” (43), he watches and listens to the humans and what goes on in Hart, the meadhall of King Hrothgar, to feel like he is a part of civilization. He also has feelings in relation to specific humans. Just like the citizens of Denmark, he is extremely affected by the Shaper and his songs that are “aswim in ringing phrases, magnificent, golden, all of them, incredibly, lies” (43). Grendel is profoundly “moved by the power of the Shaper’s poetry” (Butts). Queen Wealtheow shows Grendel the feminine, sweet, and kind side of life. “She had secret wells of joy that overflowed to them all” and her peaceful effect on those around her is a main cause of Grendel’s almost obsessive fascination with her and in turn, drives Grendel to feelings of rage. Grendel’s humanlike feelings show that his personality is similar to that of a human, helping those who read his story to relate to him.
87-91). Hearing all the jubilation that he cannot share in makes Grendel bitter. Because nothing that can be done to make Grendel’s resentfulness subside, he “[wages] his lonely war, inflicting constant cruelties on the people, atrocious hurt” (ln. 164-166) to make himself feel better. Every day he finds satisfaction in killing and eating the men who fall asleep in the hall after they have drunk and partied the evening away. Causing harm to human society is Grendel’s means of compensating for his loneliness.
Beowulf and Grendel (Gunnarsson 2005) depicts a very different protagonist than the one in the epic (Heaney 2000). The Beowulf in the film learns how to have mercy as the movie progresses, while the epic Beowulf is very flat. This is due to the fact that the modern culture is very different from that of the epic. Our culture isn't content with such characters. We want our characters to have more lifelike characteristics such as emotions and a change of heart.
...zes humanity in this scene by portraying them as the evil beings instead of Grendel who is the helpless victim of their savage assault. The men attack Grendel solely because they could not understand him and because of his appearance. Grendel makes no attempt to harm the men but to communicate with them while they are the ones that savagely tried to kill him. John Gardner portrays the men as the real monsters who mercilessly tried to kill Grendel while he was defenseless. Grendel has another revelation due to this attack in where he states. “The world resists me and I resist the world… “That’s all there is.”(Gardner, 28) Grendel makes this assertion as a means to organized the ways he perceives the world. While he once saw the world as a confusing array of frightening images, now he can separate the world into categories: those who do not resemble him and himself.