The presence of a villain remains the same throughout many books and stories throughout history, even within british literature. Two very well known examples of this are the Beowulf and the Harry Potter series, both these stories have a lot of focus on the villain. Though different in appearance, Beowulf’s Grendel and Voldemort in the Harry Potter series both share a villain’s murderous desire for power, however, their methods remain different. There are no standards of appearance or evil nature that every villain must live up to, in fact, they each have certain features that cause them to stand out and be known by that. Both Beowulf and Grendel are described in depth, physically, in their stories, and their characteristics are nothing short of frightening. In Beowulf Grendel is described first as “A powerful monster, living down in the darkness…” (Keach. 12) The author starts out simple but then indepthly describes where Grendel comes from “Grendel, who haunted the moors, the wild marshes, and made his home in a hell not hell but earth,” …show more content…
In both stories the authors put an obstacle in the way of the villain to stop them from gaining the power, in Beowulf the King’s throne/King can’t be touched because it’s protected by God, then in the Harry Potter series, Harry is protected by his scar and he keeps Voldemort from gaining the ultimate power that he craves. Both Grendel and Voldemort do whatever it takes to make their way to the top, to get the power, and they don’t care who they have to take out in the process. Grendel every night for 12 years would come up into Herot, the mead hall, and kill the same amount of people, whereas Voldemort kills sporadically, whoever threatens his power or he doesn’t like, there’s no real routine or coincidence to Voldemort’s killings. Though Voldemort and Grendel may seem very similar, they’re actually more different than they are