Analysis Of Beowulf

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Justin Krauss
Mr. Smithson
AP English 4
15 September 2012

Beowulf's Monstrous Foes

Beowulf had three monstrous encounters, Grendel, Grendel's mother, and the dragon. These could just be seen as nothing more then acts trying to explain to the reader of how heroic Beowulf was. But they reflected on some of the fears and misunderstandings that society had when the play was originally written that today we can look back and partially try to make assumptions of what they could have been talking about. His first battle against the vicious Grendel could be viewed that he wasn't an actual monster. That Grendel could have just been a disfigured or deformed human that would have been larger then the others or just had unnatural characteristics. Society would have casted them out of population because of their deformity. This would have angered them which would lead to them seeking revenge on those who cast them out. So they would return to kill them and people would view them as vicious monsters. But they would actually only be people. They could not help how they looked and when society punished them for something uncontrollable they would become furious. Grendel’s mother was a creature that lived at the bottom of a lake out in the middle of almost forbidden forest. We could view this that they could have exiled her for giving birth to such a horrible thing such a Grendel. Then when she became aware of her child’s death, She wanted nothing more then to kill and punish those that did it. So really all she was acting out of was a motherly rage which is still very common today but they would have just made her out to be a monster since her child was a monster and the nature of her killings were so vicious. Beowulf’s final battle against
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