Portrayal Of The Monster In Grendel Excerpt By John Gardner

Grendel the “Monster” Do not underestimate the power of a human being. Monsters are everywhere near and far. The sources that will be discussed are Beowulf (2007) film, Printed Cantos and textbook, and the Grendel Excerpt by John Gardner. The portrayal of Grendel in the movie differs greatly from the cantos and excerpt because in the readings he comes off as such a greedy monster, but in the movie he is lonely and in need of help. This makes society view people differently, many only look at the bad in people when there is so much goodness in them. These changes can be seen in the film, cantos, and also the excerpt. The plot or motivation in these mediums were to make Grendel the bad guy, where in both he is pushing off his pain. The author

The people in the story view Grendel as a monster, but why does Hrothgar-Grendel’s father-want Grendel to be killed? Is he full of shame? What would happen if the Geats knew about Hrothgar and Grendel’s Mother’s secret scandal? Grendel’s sadness and loneliness, the courage to protect himself from what is hurting is why he is despised. As a monster, Grendel was trying to protect himself. As a person would someone be considered a monster if they were doing something to protect themselves? Most likely not, if they were trying to better themselves. Grendel attacks the Heorot because of the pain it was bringing him, during this attack Beowulf fights him and rips his arm off which will eventually kill him. This shows the readers what Grendel looks like and how the other characters view him, which is a monster. The author made Grendel look like such a treacherous being so readers and the characters did not feel sympathy for the terrible actions she was taking. Grendel seemed more of a monster in the cantos than the film because the readers had to visually picture their own Grendel, whereas in the movie Grendel is not as terrible as he may have been pictured in the