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Post by gracepark on Sept 2, 2013 3:42:48 GMT
Not having read Beowulf, I was a bit surprised when I read the ending. The manner of the monster’s death didn’t appear as much as a triumph to me. The “stranger” entered into the picture rather late, and I still hadn’t decided for myself whether Grendel was truly evil or not. And that may be the reason why I could not sense any kind of joy that good triumphed over evil. The battle could have potentially gone either way had not a simple slip on Grendel’s part lead to an unfortunate series of events that promised his ultimate death. Nothing but bad luck sparked the imminent end of the fight, and that, for some reason, made me a bit annoyed.
Maybe the universe is just a one-dimensional, cold, indifferent place. Just because of that simple slip – that “accident” – without any judgment of good and evil, Grendel died. Is that what Gardner is trying to get across through the monster’s death?
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Post by patricktbutenhoff on Sept 3, 2013 22:14:59 GMT
I think that one major takeaway from this scene is the inaccuracy of history. Beowulf is a traditional epic poem, with an invincible hero that overcomes a seemingly unstoppable obstacle. In Grendel, however, the final battle scene is revealed to be nothing more than Grendel slipping and getting wounded. Beowulf doesn't even finish Grendel off; instead, the monster crawls off and dies of his wounds later. This is far less "romantic" than the original poem or how Beowulf would be immortalized in song. The hero archetype is a central aspect of literature, but in real life, at least according to Grendel, the stereotype is a sham.
Grendel mocks this archetype in his interactions with Unferth. Unferth treats Grendel like a classic hero: with unreasonable boldness, long, unnecessarily gallant speeches, and unending perseverance. For example, in their first meeting, he utters, "Tell them in Hell that Unferth, son of Ecglaf sent you, known far and wide in these Scanian lands as a hero among the Scyldings" (82). Grendel makes a mockery of him, defeating him effortlessly without even allowing him to become a martyr for his cause. Later, Unferth delivers another monologue: "'All very well to talk about dignity and noble language and all the rest, as if heroism were a golden trinket, mere outward show, and hollow. But such is not the case, monster. That is to say--' He paused, seemed to grope; he'd lost his train of thought" (87). Unferth is no hero; he is merely a defeated man, with nothing left but a joke of a vocabulary. The novel kills the romanticism of archetypes by mocking them.
I think Grendel does portray the universe as cold and indifferent. There are no heroes, no villains, no divine powers or fairytale endings. Instead, Grendel subjects the reader to an uninteresting, mundane reality with no greater significance. The ending scene is a great example of this.
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Post by danyhong55 on Sept 3, 2013 22:21:00 GMT
You're right in that Gardner is trying to say that the world is indifferent to the actions of men, and that reality is far harsher than how humans describe their existence. Killing Grendel to the universe is just a blip on the radar, but to the humans, it is a mark of peace, security and comfort that a horrible beast is now gone. One thing to note is that Beowulf the epic is, well, epic. It's a great and powerful story gracefully telling the heroic story of how Beowulf, the great warrior defeated the nasty and murderous beast. Gardner uses the Shaper to show how humans will take trivial or inglorious events and memorialize them. Such as the battles that Grendel witnessed were bloody, gruesome and wholly glamour-free, but the bards like the Shaper would sing songs like, "He grew up under the clouds, won the glory of men/till all his enemies sitting around him/heard across the whaleroads his demand and gave him/tribute. That was a good king!" (42). Good and bad only exists in the mind of men, and it is men who glorify the "good" deeds.
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