Beowulf Exploratory Analysis

If you mean to tell me that anyone who was born into a family of monsters exiled by God is not misunderstood, I hate to break it to you, but you’re wrong. It would be like being born into a family of Nazi supporters: you grow up supporting the Third Reich and even though it’s wrong, you don’t know any better. Beowulf introduces this tragic backstory, however, without defending Grendel and without assuming he is anything but rotten and nefarious. Grendel further expands his backstory while leaving the readers to wondering Grendel really is the way he is for a reason. There’s two sides to every story. The beginning of Beowulf opens up with a very accusing story, “...Grendel went up to Herot, wondering what the warriors would do in that hall when their drinking was done. He found them sprawled in sleep, suspecting noting, their dreams undisturbed. The monster’s thoughts were as quick as his greed or his claws: He slipped through the door and there in the silence snatched up thirty men, smashed them unknowing in their beds and ran out

“My heart began to race. I seemed to see the whole universe, even the sun and sky, leaping forward, then sinking away again, decomposing...I understand that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enemy on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. I understood that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist.” (Grendel, p 19). Between Grendel’s bouts of plundering men, he had some perspective. Not necessarily a very optimistic perspective, but he wasn’t a single-minded creature ravaging the earth as Beowulf made him appear, “Grendel came again, so set on murder that no crime could ever be enough, no savage assault quench his lust for evil” (Beowulf, lines