Gabby Walley Blog 1

Gabby Walley Blog 1

Growing up, my sister and I would hear my parents audibly fighting all throughout the day every day; I did not think anything of it, however, since it was the only family situation I had ever known. The first time I found out that not all families fight like mine was when a friend came over and mentioned how weird it was that my parents were fighting in public. The problem was that I had never known anything different so fighting was my normal. Much like this, Grendel was raised on the idea that violence and killing were normal, since his mother took part in such practices, so he had no reason to believe that he was wrong in his actions. The book eludes to the idea that Grendel might have human-like emotions, they just do not function the way we would think. Grendel talks about how after he began his mass raids of mead-halls he laughed on the outside but still felt trapped inside of himself, “hollow as a rotten tree” (Gardner 81). It’s almost as if Grendel has two personalities battling inside of him. Much like a devil and an angel on his shoulder, Grendel’s instincts and subconscious are telling him to kill, but his emotions and mind are telling him killing and hurting people is wrong. After this, we watched Grendel evolve over the course of the book to become more aware of his actions and how they may, in fact, be wrong. For example, when Grendel was thinking about raiding the mead-hall the idea of how people would shriek when they saw him made him smile, but he held back. When he did not raid the mead-hall, however, he felt himself “tightening, cross, growing restless for no reason” because he had never been aware enough of what he was doing to stop himself (Gardner 50). Grendel faces an internal battle between the angel and the devil on his shoulder throughout the rest of the novel. Since this sense of right and wrong are new found, Grendel is apt to believe that it is a bad thing. Much like anyone, Grendel is not open to change at the beginning, and he ignores his emotions and kills people anyway. 

In addition, Grendel is depicted as an ugly merciless killer, in the novel Beowulf, and so the reader is inclined to dislike Grendel and all he stands for. In this version of the story, however, Grendel is a much easier character to identify with and root for because he is given human emotions. People, whether they like it or not, identify with characters that they feel embody and resemble them. With the story being told from Grendel’s perspective where we can understand his motives and emotions, we as readers are more apt to sympathize with him. Also, the fact that Grendel has human-like emotions leads the reader to believe he is more like “us” and that we should trust him. Even though Grendel portrays the worst aspects of humans, those aspects are still there and that is what the reader focuses on. 

Monsters and their Sympahties -- Meda Wright

In older texts, monsters are just monsters. They don't have complex motivations, they just do things mindlessly, like a wolf hunting a deer. The wolf isn't malicious towards the deer, or has any kind of ulterior motive for killing the deer--he needs to eat, and the deer is prey. Much is the same for monsters and humans--the monster kills the human because he is a monster and they are a human, not out of any sort of revenge. However, one-dimensional villains like this can be...boring. Sure yes, they're killing people--oh no! But modern audiences want to know why they're killing people. "It's their nature" is no longer a viable reason.

                Beowulf, one of the oldest stories written down in the English language, has monsters that are monsters for the sake of being monsters. Grendel, the first monster, has no real motive to kill the inhabitants of Herot than “they’re loud”. His mother has a more compelling reason to kill the people, being that they killed her son. But she was killing people long before they killed her son—the death of Grendel was just a reason to invade the hall itself. The dragon, the very last monster fought, was only doing typical dragon things. Protecting its hoard, stealing, and burning down towns. He doesn’t have complex motivations for what he does. It all really boils down to “he’s a dragon.” Dragons hoard things, and don’t appreciate being stolen from. They kill people much the same as a person kills a mosquito—they’re annoying pests that are better off dead.

                It’s no wonder that in modern adaptations of Beowulf, with audiences’ changing expectations of monsters, they changed up the motivations of the monsters in the ancient story. Grendel’s mother has an interesting bastardization—in two separate film adaptations, she’s turned into a strangely sexy antagonist, seducing the heroes as they attempt to kill her. In the two film adaptations we covered in class, she had seduced Hrothgrar, and Grendel was their son. I suppose it was something added for shock value, to make the story seem more fleshed out. It really only served as a “???” moment, but was certainly a surprise. In these stories, she’s a dangerous seductress, breeding monsters and influencing kings. In John Gardner’s Grendel, however, she is nearly the opposite. A speechless creature, the only real things she says are “dool-dool” and “warovvish”. She has any real power stripped away from her, and Grendel himself compares her to a child.

                Grendel himself has his motivations changed, as well. In the animated film, his motivations are much the same as the original story—he has sensitive ears, and the loud sounds of the mead hall aggravate them. He is still a monster in a sense, and it his mother who becomes the dangerous seductress. In the Gardner novel, however, he has a significant change of character. He isn’t a mindless beast, acting on impulse to destroy the noise that’s bothering him. He is intentionally malicious—edged on by the dragon, he becomes the monster the humans see him as.