Examples Of Grendel In Beowulf

There are two sides to every story. The events may be the same, but the tone in which the story is told shapes the reader’s understanding of the events. This idea is never more evident than through the disparity between Burton Raffel’s translation of Beowulf and John Gardner’s Grendel. Both novels are based on the idea of Beowulf killing Grendel. However, the two different points of view telling the story create vastly different novels. Beowulf highlights the heroic and positive world in which Beowulf lives. Whereas Grendel elucidates on the miserable life that Grendel is circumscribed to. The consistent variance in tone skews the events in two completely different directions. The tone between Beowulf and Grendel differ in

Both of the pieces of literature, Grendel and Beowulf, contain the same story; it is just told from different viewpoints. Beowulf is an epic oratorical poem depicting the heroic Beowulf defeating the hideous creature that haunts the halls of Herot. Grendel, however, allows the reader to be able to experience the story from Grendel’s point of view. Though the books depict the same creature who possesses the same qualities, within Grendel, he is given more human characteristics and this makes the reader feel as though they are reading about a different being.

How is your understanding and attitude impacted when Beowulf’s fight against Grendel is described from Grendel’s point of view?

In both works, Beowulf and Grendel, Grendel himself is generally given the same connotations. He is given kennings, called names, referred to as the evil spawn of Cain, and even viewed as a monster; but why? Why in both books is he a wicked, horrible, person who is harshly excluded from everyone? After stumbling upon John Gardner's book, it was halfway expected that some excuse would be made for Grendel; that he wasn't really the inexorable monster the thanes in Beowulf portrayed him as. But all it really did was make him worse. What is the message we are being sent about Grendel?

Perspective plays one of the most important roles in literature due to the drastic shifts between the meaning of who is the real antagonist, profoundly portrayed in the epic Beowulf and the novel Grendel. The first major piece of English literature, Beowulf, was narrated through the perspective of the poet, experiencing his surroundings by following Beowulf’s adventures in the third person. Beowulf signifies the heroic code as the reader is provided with little background and history on Grendel, as well as a small scale of information for Grendel’s motivation. The modern novel Grendel shifts the point of view to a new rendition of Grendel, which also shifts the focus of the story from the battles to the relationships of characters and their philosophy. The third-person perspective of the epic Beowulf and the first-person perspective of the novel Grendel both serve as a lens through which the reader sees two drastically different interpretations of the same story. In Beowulf, the titular Beowulf is the hero and protagonist while in Grendel, the traditional antagonist, Grendel, is the protagonist and Beowulf is the antagonist.

In Grendel, the story is told from Grendel's point of view. Therefore he is not viewed as a killing machine. In Beowulf however, it is the exact opposite. Grendel is seen as a monster who is terrorizing Hrothgar's people. The way Grendel is portrayed in Grendel is different from the way he is portrayed in Beowulf regarding his initiative and purpose. Grendel is portrayed the same in both stories when it comes to his actions and his nature.

The story of Beowulf is a heroic epic, chronicling the distinguished deeds of the great Geatish warrior, Beowulf, who travels across the seas to rid the Danes of the evil monster Grendel, who has been inflicting destruction and terrorizing the kingdom. Beowulf is glorified for his heroic deeds of ridding the land fiendish monsters and stopping the scourge of evil, while the monster, Grendel, is portrayed as a repugnant creature who deserves death for its evil actions. However, many have disagreed with such a simplistic and biased representation of Grendel and his role in the epic poem. John Gardner in his book, Grendel, sets out to change the reader’s perception of Grendel and his role in Beowulf by narrating the story through Grendel’s point of view. John Gardner transforms Grendel, once perceived as an evil fiend in Beowulf, into a lonely but intelligent outcast who is actually quite similar to humans, due to his intelligence capacity for rational thought and his real, and at times irrational emotions. Gardner portrays Grendel as a hurt individual and as a victim of oppression, ostracized from civilization. Although the two works revolve around the same basic plot,, the themes and characters in Beowulf and Grendel are often different and sometimes contradictory.

“Beowulf” and Grendel are two tales similar in many ways, yet different from each other. These stories are like a coin; you cannot have one side without the other. Just as the sides of a coin share the same coin, these stories share a similar plot, a setting, and tell of the same events. The sides of a coin also have differences as do “Beowulf” and Grendel. In the case of these two tales this difference is in their respective philosophical views.

When Beowulf hears about Grendel, he feels that it is his duty to stop Grendel from killing anymore, Beowulf leaves to go to Herot to destroy him. Beowulf is mostly being applaud for his long journey to face this terrible monster. Beowulf says, “Grendel is no braver, no stronger than I am! I could kill him with my sword: I shall not” (line 677). Beowulf feels

In Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, Grendel is nothing but an evil fiend that needs to be slain, “a fiend out of hell, began to work his evil in the world” (Heaney 9). Grendel is portrayed as an evil monster that has only been wreaking havoc and terrorizing a kingdom for an extended amount of time because it thrives on the pain of others. Seamus states, “Malignant by nature, he never showed remorse” (Heaney 10). Grendel is made out to appear as little more than a monster, “insensible to pain and human sorrow” (Heaney 11). He is portrayed to have little to no human qualities, to be the furthest thing from

Beowulf and Grendel are two different stories, and characters, who look at the same situation in polarized ways. Each character has their own story that is written from different time periods: the Anglo-Saxon time period and America in the 1970’s. Both of these time periods have different attributes that make them special; the Anglo-Saxon time period consists of the literary movement of the epic poem and America in the 1970’s consists of the literary movement known as postmodernism. Beowulf is shaped by the Anglo-Saxon time period through its use of the heroic code and religious influences and Grendel is shaped by the American 1970’s time period through its use of metafiction and an unreliable narrator.

Both the epic poem Beowulf and the novel Grendel depict the same storyline, but from different point of views. Grendel’s personality tends to be much more evil than he himself depicts in the novel. Since Grendel is the narrator of the novel, the audience only gets to know what the story is like from his point of view, which he stretches the truth on numerous occasions. But, in Beowulf, the poem has a narrator and is in the third person omniscient, this means the audience knows how all the characters and feeling, thinking, or saying. Also, the theme nature vs. nurture appears a lot in Grendel which means his viewpoints on certain things are either

The story of Beowulf is a heroic epic chronicling the illustrious deeds of the great Geatish warrior Beowulf, who voyages across the seas to rid the Danes of an evil monster, Grendel, who has been wreaking havoc and terrorizing the kingdom. Beowulf is glorified for his heroic deeds of ridding the land of a fiendish monster and halting its scourge of evil while the monster is portrayed as a repugnant creature who deserves to die because of its evil actions. In the epic poem, Beowulf the authors portrays Grendel as a cold-hearted beast who thrives on the pain of others. Many have disagreed with such a simplistic and biased representation of Grendel and his role in the epic poem. John Gardner in his book, Grendel set out to change the

To begin, one of the many ways that Beowulf was different than Grendel is that Beowulf was brave. Every night Grendel snuck into Herot Hall to destroy King Hrothgar’s men. He did this while hiding in the shadows, sneaking around in the dead of night, and attacking while the men we asleep and at there most vulnerable. These are not the characteristics the brave, these are the characteristics of a foul, loathsome, cowardly beast. Mean while, Beowulf liked to meet a problem head on, in this case the problem was Grendel himself. Determined Beowulf sailed to Denmark to defeat Grendel, telling Hrothgar that he will take Grendel’s life with his bare hands. As told in the story, “ That mighty protector of men/ Meant to hold the monster till it’s life/ leaped out” (Raffel, 1963, l. 366-368). And when Beowulf got the chance to do just that, Grendel took the cowards road, “Grendel’s one thought

     Good and evil is one of the main conflicts in the poem Beowulf. How is Grendel affected by the concepts of good and evil? Grendel is an alienated individual who just wants to be a part of something. His desire to fit in causes him to do evil things. Grendel is fascinated by the Shaper’s poetry. He often