Comparing Beowulf, Grendel's Mother, And The Dragon

In the epic ¨Beowulf¨ there is an obvious theme of good vs evil. The good is represented by Beowulf himself, and the evil is represented by monsters. This paper goes in depth about the three monsters in the story. Theses monsters are Grendel, Grendel's Mother, and The Dragon. Grendel is the first of the monsters to appear in the epic ¨Beowulf¨. He is a huge dragon, with powerful jaws, humongous claws with scary talons, and is pure evil. It is shown that he is pure evil when Beowulf's men tried attacking Grendel with their swords and the swords did not even scratch him. The only thing that kill him was Beowulf fighting with his bare hands. Grendel represents ¨death the devourer¨, because he attacks the people of Herot for no reason and shows no remorse. While reading the epic the reader gets a strong feeling of hatred for him, and also a strong sense of fear that prevailed in the writing. In the story Grendel is referred to as ¨bearing god's hatred¨ (pg 21). The next monster to appear is Grendel's Mother. She represents ¨Guardian of the Death Mound¨, this is shown when she takes Grendel's arm and keeps it with the rest of his body at her home. She does not just go around killing for no reason, like Grendel. She …show more content…
The Dragon is just a normal fire breathing dragon. He attacks Beowulf´s home many years after Grendel and Grendel's Mother. The Dragon represents ¨Protector of the Treasures¨, this is shown by The Dragon having a huge pile of gold and other treasures in his cave. He started attacking Beowulf's people, only when someone stole a piece of his treasure. This is the last monster Beowulf ever fought because while he was fighting and killing The Dragon, he was fatally injured and later died. The reader feels hatred and fear towards The Dragon. The feeling of hatred is prominent because he is the reason Beowulf dies, and the feeling of fear is because he is a fire breathing dragon killing