Grendel's Downfall

The darkest depths of the world's five oceans are among the most mysterious regions on Earth. Indeed, humankind knows very little about these dark, yet rich, ecosystems, as more than a staggering ninety percent of the oceans remain unexplored. This unfamiliarity generates a range of human emotions, from fear, to revulsion, to fascination, which has informed human conceptualizations of the ocean depths for centuries. The prominent Epic of Beowulf, written as early as the eleventh century, offers an important literary example of this longstanding human fear of both the known and unknown aspects of the ocean's abyss, a fear that still plagues many individuals today, nearly ten centuries later. Throughout the Epic of Beowulf, the narrator often …show more content…
After Grendel is grievously wounded in his battle with Beowulf, he returns to his den to nurse his wounds. As he lays dying, "the bloodshot water [wallows] and [surges]" and there are "loathsome upthrows and overturnings of waves and gore and wound-slurry" (Heaney 57). The narrator states that when his death was upon him, Grendel "dived deep into his marsh-den, [drowning] out his life and his heathen soul: Hell claimed him there" (Heaney 57). In is in this abyss that Grendel dies, which strengthens the notion that the Beowulf author perceived the ocean depths as evil and akin to Hell itself. Grendel's mother, described as "a swamp-thing from hell," also resides and dies in a marsh-den (Heaney 105). It seems likely that the Beowulf author considered the abyss an appropriate setting for the deaths of these two antagonists as a result of the fear and mystery with which this ecosystem was …show more content…
While the Beowulf narrator considers the abyss to be infested with sea dragons, reptiles and other such creatures, humans of the modern day have long considered the abyss to be empty space devoid of life, despite a multitude of counterevidence revealing the abundancy of animals living in this ecosystem (Alaimo 233-234). If not ignored completely by modern humans, such creatures are photographed to be sold as commodities for "coffee-table books or computer images" (Alaimo 244). It seems that many modern humans are guilty of treating the abyss, and the creatures there residing, as an ecosystem worthy of intrigue, but undeserving of protection. This explains, in part, humankinds excessive exploitation and destruction of these vital and vulnerable habitats, through "ocean acidification, massive overfishing, bottom trawling, deep-sea mining, shark finning, and decades of dumping toxic and radioactive waste into the oceans" (Alaimo 235). While the Beowulf characters were by no means paragons of virtue, they seem to view the abyss with a begrudging respect for the dangerous and diverse sea life it harbours, which undoubtedly reflects the centrality and importance that the ocean played in the lives of the seafaring