Superego In Beowulf

In the classic tale of Beowulf, the protagonist’s main nemeses are the monsters Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon. It has been argued that each represents a different evil from an unknown world, or has certain religious significance. The reality is that these antagonists are not from the outside, but rather from the psyche of Beowulf himself, or at least, the poet reflecting his own struggles, or common struggles of the times. Sigmund Freud divided the human psyche into three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. If one were to view each division of the Freudian psyche, in correlation with each of the monsters in the poem, they might notice the id represented by Grendel, the ego, represented by Grendel’s mother and lastly, the super ego, represented by the dragon.

King Hrothgar builds a mead hall, called Herot, for his warriors. The noise from Herot bothers Grendel, who lives in the swamp near the castle. In turn, Grendel terrorizes the mead hall killing Hrothgar’s warriors. This goes on for years, until Beowulf hears about it and decides to help. Beowulf takes on Grendel, unarmed, and rips his arm off, fatally wounding it. Both Beowulf and Grendel seem to be dominated by the id aspect of the personality at this point in time. Beowulf feels the need to fight an undefeatable foe…unarmed. He feels that he is invincible, and has a need to prove it to himself and the world. Grendel, on the other hand, is just stepping on ants. He is bothered by something, and has the power to alleviate the source of his nuisance. A brief explanation of the Freudian “ID” is as