During the Anglo-Saxon period, heroic characteristics are defined as being courageous, brave, loyal and victorious in arduous battles. In Beowulf, by Seamus Heaney, Beowulf is given the title “hero” because he wins the battle between Grendel by killing him. However, the Danes see Grendel as a monster and a bloodlust because he is the total opposite of how the Danes discern the definition of a “hero.” Although Grendel is fated to be a “God-cursed brute” (Beowulf 11), there is another side of Grendel where the Danes do not see. Grendel can be seen as a gruesome, yet a pitiful creature.
Grendel is destined to be a malicious character because he is a descendant from Cain’s clan. Cain committed a sin which the Creator, or God, did not forgive. He murdered his brother, Abel, out of jealousy and anger. In Beowulf it says, “the Almighty made him [Cain] anathema and out of the curse of his exile there sprang ogres and elves and evil phantoms” (9) which is what the Creator bestowed upon Cain as part of his punishment. This shows how Grendel is obliged to exist as an evil character, following Cain’s shadow of darkness and malign.
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“Merciless Grendel struck again with more gruesome murders” (Beowulf 11) shows that Grendel is a wicked murder. The Danes see Grendel as a monster who is “insensible to pain and human sorrow” and “never showed remorse” (11). Notably, the Danes think of Grendel as a creature who has no emotions, but just as one of Cain’s descendants who goes around killing people for his own fulfillment of joy. Grendel’s actions of violence can also be seen from Gardner’s Grendel, “I tore off sly old Athelgard’s head...here I killed the old woman with the irongray hair.” The exterior of Grendel is simply a violent monster, yet in the inside, Grendel is a different