Alina Shrestha
Grendel showed emotion of anger, rage, pity. He had human characteristics like long slender body, arms, legs, all the feature that a human has. Apart from his scary look, and inability to communicate, all his actions and behavior are like humans. He is similar to Beowulf and other people in Danes in a sense that they all kill their enemies. They destroy and kill whatever comes their way and disrupts them. So, it can be seen that the society that the Danes live in is a monster as well because they kill innocents for their benefit and oppress women and use them as peace-weavers. In chapter 2 Grendel says “I understood that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears” he realizes that the world is like a bull, destructive. This marks the human’s influence on Grendel and his turning point from innocent to a murderer. The societies influence and hatred turned Grendel into a monster.
The societies treatment and value toward the women is not equal to men. It can be viewed that the society was the monster towards women taking their basis rights and freedom. Women in early Anglo-Saxon culture were viewed as possessions, they had no say towards their lifestyle or culture. The women were used as peace-weavers between family, they were traded for peace without their consent. The women’s sole purpose was to provide for their family for others. The role of the women was to get married off to other tribes, kingdom to promote peace and happiness to the community. Women’s job was to serve the ruler and its people. In Beowulf and Grendel Hildeburh, Freawaru and Wealhtheow display limited role, they seem to be irrelevant and their only role served as peace-weavers. Wealhtheow is a peace-weaver between the Scyldingsand Helming. She’s Hrothgar’s wife and queen of the Danes. She represents love, altruism and is an ideal woman who brings peace and harmony to the community. The only female character that had some type of power was Grendel’s mom, but she was isolated from the rest of the world and could neither speak or communicate.
The society can also be seen as a monster because they divide the community between race and gender, majorities and minorities creating sexism and racism. While Grendel attacks and kills people openly, the society attacks behinds people’s back mocking and ridiculing them about their placement in society. Therefore, it can be argued that the society turned Grendel into a monster along with dragon’s influence. Women however, were victims of society since they are used as peace-weavers and didn’t have much rights and freedom. It can be seen that for Wealhtheow and other women in Grendel and Beowulf, the Scyldings and Helming society are the monsters, as the women are being oppressed and used into peace-weaving marriages and the females are seen as irrelevant to the society. While for the people of Danes, Grendel is a monster because he disrupts and kills them.
This post was eye opening in analysis for me because I did not see society being as much a monster as Grendel. After reading this, I see society as a monster because it somehow played a role in Grendel becoming who he is. It seemed as if he never really became the monster until he met the humans in which they ostracized him from their world, singing songs of how he was not worthy. But I also agree from this post that society has different views of gender throughout the whole story line. Just as stated, women were used for peace-weaving marriages, only to keep kingdoms out of war. It also accounts towards disrespecting men I think, because men are only seen as warriors with honor but if you were born of a family line that did not accomplish missions or treasures, you were shunned from the standard of men being strong and heroes.
ReplyDeleteThis post was excellent in culminating all themes of Grendel as well as Beowulf through explaining the impacts of society on all characters in the stories and how even just one scene can explain the views of gender and class of a person.
In your second paragraph, you mentioned that human beings possess an urge for destruction, and that the world itself was destructive. I liked this part because I believe that even in today's society, human beings are a destructive force. Though we might innovate and develop technology to improve our effect on the planet, we still continue to destroy it in the process. For example, we have developed a method to achieve renewable energy through wind power. Even though we have created this method to avoid pollution from coal, we still destroy vast amounts of land that animals depend on. Basically, as hard as we try to fix our destructive nature, it can never be eradicated.
ReplyDeleteLooking at the last paragraph where you talk about the negative effects of Grendel's and the humans' violence and how it plays a factor in women's role in society, it reminded me of how war works. War is nothing more than a civil war against the human race. Both sides of the conflict lost numerous people like how the Danes lost many men to Grendel, and how Grendel dies at the end of both novels. Nobody wins. In addition, civilians are killed in wars though they never wished to be involved in the conflict similar to the women who were forced into marriage and live on faraway lands. Like I said: nobody wins.