Comparison Of Beowulf And Salem's Lot

As people live their lives everyday, they tend to make choices that will affect them down the road, whether in a good or a bad way, the choice is in the hands of the individual or the monster. This can be seen in both Beowulf and Salem’s Lot, since the actions of both main villains leads them to death. As we look into the characters, we can see that if they had held back from certain actions, they would most likely still be alive. This also applies to us in real life, for every action there is a reaction, it just depends on how this affects us.

There are many factors that contribute to how a monster or person plans their fate out unintentionally or intentionally. For example, monsters normally have savage actions such as Grendel who attacks

Grendel was only acting on instinct since the music hurt his ears. The author sets the tone in the story for us to have compassion for Grendel since Beowulf plays the roll of making the humans look bad. They exiled Grendel therefor, he did not stand a chance in the first place to become good, but instead have to live a life of misery. Grendel also only attacked when they played music since it sent waves of agony through his head. He was acting because of pain and not because he really wanted to hurt everyone. Kurt Barlow on the other hand is pure evil and the author does a very good job of setting the tone of this. Kurt Barlow knows himself as pure evil and enjoys it when he hangs Stakers dead body upside down so it faces earth “Barlow did it, Mark said. But why like this? Hung upside down? Its as old as Macedonia, Father Callahan said. Hanging the body of your enemy upside down so his head faces earth instead of Heaven” (Stephen King, 508). Barlow even goes as far to call himself the king of separates, which proves how evil he is. Grendel does not do any of these actions that Kurt does, Grendel only acts on pain, proves his point and then runs home. Kurt Barlow keeps on turning others into vampires and carrying out horrific acts such as placing knives on the stairs that Jimmy soon falls on and dies. Kurt barlow was born evil and remained evil till the day he died. He was only killed since he started carrying out such evil acts in his journey, which lead to his