Pros And Cons Of Grendel

As I am sure you have gathered from our previous correspondence, I have found a serious fault in the binary system of thought required to sustain your institution’s organizational system. You never explicitly define or exemplify how one must behave in order to be labeled as either naughty or nice, which leaves the most vital standards of your operation open to almost any interpretation and puts you and your labor force at risk of exploitation. If you have any intention of continuing your business and perpetuating your system of character judgement, you must specify your criteria for naughtiness and niceness. Obviously, these definitions must allow for variations in distinct societal norms among and within different cultures while still providing

a measure with which to judge individual behavior. Therefore, I propose the following standards: naughtiness is behavior that is indicative of a departure of moral and ethical social norms; by extension, niceness is behavior that is illustrative of compliance with moral and ethical social norms.
Even with the implementation of specific standards for behavior, there are nevertheless faults in your system, Mr. Claus. Individuals that are excluded from or otherwise unfamiliar with society cannot reasonably be expected to follow the rules of that society, and are therefore veritable wild cards that cannot conform to the conventions of your system of moral judgements. I believe that you are obligated to absolve these individuals of their misdeeds and remove their names from your naughty list. I am concerned, in particular, for the monster, Grendel.
Without a doubt, Grendel is a wicked creature.

I recognize that he has terrorized the famous mead-hall Herot for “twelve long winters” (Liuzza 147), killing thirty men the first night and committing even “greater murder” (Liuzza 136) in the subsequent years, meaning that he has quite probably killed thousands of unsuspecting Danes in their sleep. Grendel’s ferocity and savage tendencies are not under debate. Wanting to punish Grendel for committing such atrocities is understandable. However, it is hypocritical to thrust society’s moral code onto Grendel, as well as to criticize him for being unable to adhere to it, when he was rejected from society itself. Furthermore, this style of purely performative punishment would arguably further humiliate Grendel and contribute to his isolation. If Grendel is to be punished for his actions, coal in his stocking should be the least of his

worries.
Grendel is ferocious and savage, among other things, because he was raised to be ferocious and savage.

Grendel was never taught to be anything else, and therefore never had the opportunity to learn proper behavior according to Danish society. Because Grendel never learned how to be a nice Dane, he cannot be punished for being a naughty one. As far as we know, God “condemned” (Liuzza 106) Grendel from birth because he was “among Cain’s race” (Liuzza 107). Thus, Grendel is “forced… far from mankind” (Liuzza 109-110), like Cain, his forefather, because he is descended from the world’s first murderer, effectively punishing him for a crime he did not commit. Isolating Grendel and his mother inhibited normal socialization and prevented him accepting conventional Danish morality. Condemning Grendel as a murder shaped Grendel into a murderer. Grendel was doomed to fail and was still penalized for his

failure.
Grendel may be far from nice but it is not fair to label him as naughty and to further deprive him from celebration and a sense of community. If naughtiness is behavior that is indicative of a departure of moral and ethical social norms, and niceness is behavior that is illustrative of compliance with moral and ethical social norms, then people, such as Grendel, that have been forcibly disconnected from their culture and society cannot reasonably be expected to conform to these standards. Nonetheless, clarifying your standards of behavior by providing precise definitions of naughtiness and niceness is an improvement from running your organization ran on a series of variant ambiguities.