What Is The Difference Between Beowulf And Grendel's Mother

The choices made in the movie detract from my understanding of the poem. Throughout the poem, Hrothgar and Grendel’s mother are pictured differently than from how they are shown in the movie. In the poem I pictured Hrothgar as someone who, when Grendel was tormenting his people, felt “joyless in Herot … mourning the fate of his lost friends and companions.”(Beowulf 44) but instead he was shown as a heartless, inebriated king. Grendel’s mother was described as a she-wolf, a monster, (Beowulf 449) however in the movie she is a beautiful creature, with an attractive human-like body, and not a “wolf” like appearance. The course of events in the poem, such as the battle against Grendel’s mother and the truth behind Grendel’s identity, are much different from those of the movie.

In the poem Grendel is said to be “conceived by a pair of … monsters born of Cain, murderous creatures banished by god”(Beowulf 19) and in the movie he is said to have been conceived by Hrothgar and Grendel’s mother. The setting of the battle against Grendel’s mother and the battle against the Dragon, in the movie detracts from my understanding of the poem. When Beowulf went to face Grendel’s mother in the poem, the lair was described as a place where even a “deer hunted through the woods by pack of hounds, a stag with great horns… prefers to die on those shores.”(Beowulf 433) instead of going into the lake, instead, the movie depicts the lair as a place difficult to get to, but not impossible, it appears to be less scarier than that of the poem. Throughout the battle against the Dragon, ‘Beowulf’s son,’ the setting is Grendel’s mother’s