Journal 5

Grendel is a monster that acts very childish as if new into the world and as a bully. Grendel acts out of rage and begins to snatch people from their beds and kills them. He is doing this out of the hatred for the Harper’s music and the people of the mead-halls attitude. “I no longer remember exactly what he sang. I know only that it had a strange effect on me: it no longer filled me with doubt and distress, loneliness, shame. It enraged me. It was their confidence, maybe- their blissful, swinish ignorance, their bumptious self satisfaction, and, worst of all, their hope.”(76) Grendel also spares little Unferth from death multiple times because Grendel thinks it is funny. Unferth wants to be a hero and be sung about in the shaper’s song, but Grendel won’t let that happen, being an example of a bully. It is as if he is throwing a giant tantrum for not getting his way, or in this sense for being “picked on.” His response is to take it out on others. Even though Grendel is in the fourth century A.D. in Denmark he acts very much like people of later times. The people do not like Grendel because he is coming in and destroying the livelihood of the village under Hrothgar’s rule. Though Grendel is a babied monster he is still thoughtful and very self conscious. He shares language and emotion much like humans do. He gets scared, angry, happy, sad, or bored. Grendel is moved by the beauty of Hrothgar’s queen and wants to kill her to set an example. Right as if he was going to do it Grendel stopped and let the queen go, showing that he has a better side. “I decided to kills her. I firmly committed myself to killing her, slowly, horribly. I would begin by holding her over the fire and cooking the ugly hole between her legs. I laughed harder at that. They were all screaming now, hooting and yawling to their dead-stick gods. I would kill her, yes! I would squeeze out her feces between my fists. So much for meaning as quality of life! I would kill her and teach them reality. Grendel the truth- teacher, phantasm- tester! It was what I would be from this day forward-my commitment, my character as long as I lived- and nothing alive or dead would change my mind!”(109-110) “I changed my mind. It would be meaningless, killing her. As meaningless as letting her live. It would be for me, mere pointless pleasure, an illusion of order for this one frail, foolish flicker- flash in the long dull fall of eternity.”(110) Grendel proved that he can do such horrible things but he does not have to. Grendel is like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He has an evil and nice side to him. So although he was going to kill the queen and be a monster like he was born to be, he reluctantly let her go in the sense that he would get nothing for killing her.