(13) GRENDEL

 

Beowulf’s famous monstrous antagonist.

Yes, he’s one of the three epic antagonists for Beowulf, but let’s face it – Grendel is his first antagonist, not only in narrative sequence but in significance. Grendel’s mother doesn’t even have a name, being literally identified through Grendel as her son, and the dragon is similarly not named. It’s hard to think of a more iconic duo of a hero and their antagonist than Beowulf and Grendel.

Also, let’s face it – it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for Grendel, even that he had some justice on his side. I mean, who hasn’t felt like this about their noisy neighbors at one time or another? It’s not like there was any residential zoning laws or that Grendel could make a noise complaint to the king.

The latter was particularly so as it was the king – King Hrothgar – who was the noisy neighbor, throwing wild drunken parties in his mead hall, Heorot. Of course, Grendel took his noise complaints too far, attacking the hall every night for years and killing its occupants, hence making it unusable.

As for Grendel’s monstrous nature, it remains a matter of argument as to what exactly he was. He is described as a descendant of the Biblical Cain, who like Lilith seems to have spent his time spawning monsters – with Grendel described as “a creature of darkness, exiled from happiness and accursed of God, the destroyer and devourer of our human kind” and a “shadow walker”. He is also referred to in the poem by words evoking the beings of Germanic mythology – that is, as a monster and giant, albeit his status as such is undermined by the absence of any clear description, apart from him being seemingly linked to water like other supernatural monsters.

Some even conjecture him to be a berserker or fierce warrior. Whatever the case, he met his match – and his death – with Beowulf.

 

 

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)