Kennings In Beowulf

Genre

The main genre for Beowulf [The Fight with Grendel] is a narrative poem which is falls under the category of epic. An epic usually concerns a serious subject containing elements of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation.

Literary devices

The poem is known for its usage of kennings (compound words), throughout the stanzas the kennings are being used metaphorically to imply things or characters in an unnoticeable way. Grendel is identified as “shadow-stalker”, “terror-monger”. “Mist-bands” indicates the army of fog, “cloud-murk” is fog, “bone-lappings” represents ligaments which serve as connective tissues that connect two bones or cartilages to hold a joint. ”mead-benches” are pews in the hall. “hell-serf” signifies

the servant of hell. “fen-banks” is Grendel’s lair where the monster was left desolated after being fatally injured. Some word form such as cry and scream by imitation of a sound made by or associated with its referent to achieve poetic effect is known as onomatopoeia. There are 5 lines grouped together in each stanza which is called cinquain.
Summary
Beowulf [The fight with Grendel] is an epic poetry that is mainly to pay tribute to the hero Beowulf himself.

Argument
Grendel is portrayed as a pure devil that slaughters relentlessly, a real devil does not have human traits. However, in the text Grendel seems to run away desperately to his lair after numerous raids and isolates himself which resembles human nature as lone, friendless and unloved.
Analysis/interpretation
A long waited night indicates something sinister is going to happen as Grendel sneaks his way into the hall looking for victims.

The guards are all asleep except one and the monster couldn’t do anything. Grendel lurks around to hunt his prey; he goes into the hall and roams his way to stronghold. Becoming enraged, he rips open the mouth of the building with his mighty strength. The monster is a real killing machine, he kills for his joy. It is not merely trashing and slashing around, what is more terrifying is that he would devour his victim alive, savaging comes first then he would start indulging himself by chomping on ligaments of his victims which is pictured as someone guzzle on Kentucky fried chicken and subsequently drinks up their blood. The rising action occurs when Grendel is about to attack Beowulf at his vulnerable spot but turns out as Grendel gets arm locked and pinned down by Beowulf, it is the superhuman strength that the monster ever faced. The story rushes to a climax as the battle of good vs evil ensues between the two, one fights for righteousness and wants justice to be served the other is driven by hatred, jealousy and greed; a man-slaughter machine that enjoys seeing agony in dying men. As the two struggles to take each other’s lives out, furnishings and concrete were destroyed. The battle ends up with Grendel fatally wounded with a broken arm and the soldiers want to ensure the monster is dead by amplifying the damage with their swords but the monster

is invulnerable to any lethal weapons. This shows that we should not repay evil with evil; we see the monster slashing and tearing up humans in a gruesome way and now they want to see him pay by doing the same thing. The message is to remind us that the evil will always sin but we don’t have to follow their footstep. The dying monster flees to his lair with fatal wound and seems to have monologue over the things he did before. He should not have died with too much regret as if he were a human being, devils only enjoy the sins and see it as a sign of victory, they lure people into committing sins and they aren’t supposed to feel any emotion but the joy of tempting people into joining them as hell servant. Finally, the death of Grendel restores peace, everything is neutralized and back to where they were.