Grendel

In Beowulf, Grendel is represented as the blood-hungry antagonist who is responsible for havoc in Heorot. He’s defeated by the epic hero Beowulf in a clash that results in brute force and strength. His death is lauded by everyone, but when reading Grendel, the reader is forced to empathize with Grendel from another perspective. Although Grendel is responsible for all the deaths of the thanes in Heorot for twelve years, one cannot help but understand Grendel’s wrath and anger for Grendel. Grendel is continually frustrated at the world and full of rage due to the lack of answers for the world’s mysteries. He views the dull-witted ram as a direct example of stupid creatures that exist but are unable to think, simply operating like mechanical creatures and existing with a mind like a blank slate, filled with no thoughts or emotions. Yet, Grendel contrasts himself with the ram and emphasizes how he’s thinking, how he’s filled with complicated emotions. Moreover, Grendel is also derisive in tone towards the calf who he’s afraid will kill him by the blow of his head, but Grendel then realizes that the ram is unable to injure him not because he’s struck too low, but because “he would always strike too low: he fought by instinct, blind mechanism ages old. He’d have fought the same way against a n earthquake or an eagle. (21)”Yet Grendel is not self-conceited—“Not that I fool myself with thoughts that I’m more noble (14)—he knows the foul deeds that he’s committed, the numerous murders his hands are stained with, but he’s also similar in many aspects to Frankenstein’s creation. Both Grendel and Frankenstein are born putrefied, unholy, desecrated. They are offered no chance of redemption while their fates are sealed by nature’s grasp. Fate is outside of the control of both creatures and thus they accept their roles. Yet the difference that lies between Grendel and Frankenstein is the characteristic indifference to mindless natural forces in one and the romanticism of heightened sensations that results from nature in the other. Grendel views the world as mindless, since he views it as unthinking, but also empty—“”the meaningless objectness of the world, the universal bruteness …the world is all a pointless accident (28)”he yells to the sky but it pays him no attention and he realizes that the Earth will not respond to him. Yet the Creation views nature as a comforting force for he flees to the Alps in order to escape and find refuge from humankind. Another apparent difference in how Grendel is a carnivore whereas Frankenstein’s Creation is a vegetarian even though both are responsible for the deaths of several persons, Grendel actually eats the blood and flesh of humankind perhaps this is due to the fact that he realizes humanity is hazardous because he was dealing “with thinking creatures, pattern makers, the most dangerous things I’d ever met. (27)” This represents how both the Creation and Grendel viewed humanity as a threat because of their ability to reason for themselves and as a result, kill forms of dangers that were embodied in Grendel and the Creation.