Beowulf And Grendel Research Paper

The battle between good and evil is a major theme in both Beowulf and Grendel. Beowulf is a story of a peaceful kingdom that is being terrorized by a bloodthirsty monster; Grendel. The story Grendel, is about a confused monster who is trying to figure out who the real monster is in his world. Humans can be just as monstrous as the blood thirsty monster that they are terrified of. Humans are portrayed as wonderful and flawless in Beowulf but they are seen as wasteful monsters in the story Grendel.
In the story Beowulf, Grendel is seen as a “powerful monster” and “a demon.” Hrothgar and the Danes are part of a successful kingdom that is being haunted by an evil creature named Grendel. An example of his terror is when, “He slipped through the door and there in the silence snatched up thirty men, smashed them unknowingly in their beds and ran out with their bodies” (Raffel 121-123). Grendel is portrayed as a mindless monster who slaughters anybody in his way. There is no explanation for Grendel’s murderous adventures and to the …show more content…
Grendel is treated like a monster by the humans but Grendel believes that the humans are the real monsters. The men would brag about their great battles and victories. It was not uncommon for them to get into violent arguments. Gardner said, “Now and then some trivial argument would break out, and one of them would kill another one” (Gardner 32). This shows that the humans were not as upstanding as they thought. Grendel is very disturbed by the wastefulness of the humans. Grendel is talking about war when he says, “I was sickened, if only at the waste of it: all they killed-cows, horses, men- they left to rot or burn” (Gardner 36). He could not understand why the humans would kill each other so senselessly. He killed for survival and food but when the humans would kill, they left the corpses to rot. The humans are the real monsters in this