We’re going to look at Grendel’s origins, but let’s back up before we jump into this.
A rash of books and films over the last few years seek to take an otherwise familiar tale and tell it to us from the perspective of the villain. Movies like Maleficent and books like Twilight take a well known tale or legend and flip them on their heads. Maleficent, it turns out, was justified all along. Vampires don’t die in the sun, they sparkle. They aren’t actually bad guys after all, they’re just misunderstood. And maybe the old heroes of the tale aren’t as spotless as we’ve been led to believe. The bad guys are now the heroes. Or if not heroes, we’re at least led to believe their descent into Badguydom is laudably warranted. In other words, we’re meant to relate to them. We’re made to see things through their eyes and this causes us to empathize with them in some way. In a better time this type of thing was known as ‘calling evil good and good evil’.
And so it comes as no surprise that this kind of rotten thinking has spilled over into Beowulf. The fiendish minds that seek to twist good things aren’t just in Hollywood. You’ll find them in academia and literature too. We find a good example in this ludicrous article The Question of Race in Beowulf where the subtitle tells you exactly what you’re getting yourself into: J.R.R. Tolkien’s seminal scholarship on Beowulf centers a white male gaze. Toni Morrison focused on Grendel and his mother as raced and marginal figures.
Setting the ridiculous claims about Tolkien aside, we see that there actually exists a segment of humanity that identifies with Grendel and his mother. These Grendel-fans seek to “decenter the white male hero, focusing instead on the racialized, politicized, and gendered figures of Grendel and his mother.” They call the monsters, “monsters” with those quotation marks to tell you they are only so-called monsters. They do this because they are identifying with the Bad Guy and don’t want the Bad Guy label. Look:
In Morrison’s analysis, Grendel has developed from being a murderous guest to Hrothgar’s Hall who kills for no reason, to becoming the central focus. This passage asks us to think about why Grendel would do what he did. Morrison understands him as dispossessed; his “dilemma is also ours.” She situates Grendel as kith and kin to her imagined critical reading audience—black women.
Grendel, in this interpretation, is not the monster we’ve been led to believe, he’s actually “kith and kin” to—according to Morrison and this author—black women. Move over Harriet Tubman.
One more to launch us back into Beowulf:
Morrison analyzes Beowulf through Grendel’s racialized gaze. She points out Grendel’s lack of back story:
“But what seemed never to trouble or worry them was who was Grendel and why had he placed them on his menu? …The question does not surface for a simple reason: evil has no father. It is preternatural and exists without explanation. Grendel’s actions are dictated by his nature; the nature of an alien mind—an inhuman drift… But Grendel escapes these reasons: no one had attacked or offended him; no one had tried to invade his home or displace him from his territory; no one had stolen from him or visited any wrath upon him. Obviously he was neither defending himself nor seeking vengeance. In fact, no one knew who he was.”
Now this is the problem you bump up against when you call evil good and good evil. You say stupid things. Lack of backstory? In spite of all the claims Morrison makes, the Beowulf poet actually does provide an explanation and origin for Grendel and his actions. This leads me to believe she and other likeminded Grendel-groupies either don’t like the explanation given in the text or they misunderstand the nature of evil. As their empathy resides with the monsters (“his dilemma is also ours”), I think the latter is the more likely of the two.
But don’t take my word for it. Let’s look at the text together. Starting with line 86.
Then a fierce evil demon suffered distress
long in torment, who dwelt in darkness.
For day after day, he heard rejoicing
loud in the hall: there was music of the harp,
and clear song of the scop, who sang of creation,
the beginnings of men far back in time.
He proclaimed the Almighty created the earth,
The poet goes on to tell us how the scop told of how God created the sun and moon and trees and life. He continues:
Thus did loyal men live their lives in joy,
happy in the hall,
So let’s look at this. Right up front we’re told exactly who Grendel is: a fierce evil demon. We’ll get into this a bit more in a moment, but this isn’t a codeword for some misunderstood person of color. Take three mindsets: Pagan, Christian, Modern. Of the three two of them believe in demons and a spiritual realm. The Modern mind is left scoffing or snarling at the first two as backwards and wouldn’t dare be caught thinking such nonsense. That, for starters, is the first misunderstanding. In the Modern mind there is no category for the spiritual and therefore no category for the demonic. The foolish thing is that one doesn’t even need to believe in such things in order to realize that both the men in Hrothgar’s day and in the time of the writing of Beowulf that such belief in demons was held to be true. Modern thinking audaciously discounts other worldviews merely because they aren’t modern.
We also see the beginning of a motive for Grendel’s actions. He was suffering distress, long in torment. Why? What is it that might cause a fierce evil demon who dwells in darkness to suffer so? Morrison and the Grendel-gals would have us believe that no one offended him. But the poet is specific. The thing that caused this misery was a continual rejoicing in the mead-hall. Rejoicing! Music! Singing! Lives lived in joy and happiness! And lest we think Grendel is merely perturbed at a loud ruckus like music being played too loud in the apartment next door, we’re told exactly what all that ruckus was about: It was, in a word, worship.
Don’t listen to the lies. This was no drunken carousing as the 2007 Robert Zemeckis film portrays, with the stench of stale beer and vomit, women willingly and unwillingly violated, mead-benches upended in a reeling brawl, and a sloshed king spilling his cup and slurring his speech. No. These were merry men and loyal. Happy and joyful. And we’re told what all the fuss was about: the scop, (the poet, bard, storyteller, entertainer, lore master) was singing a True song and singing it clear. A song rooted and grounded in the truest of truth. A song about God and His work. Demons hate that kind of thing. Which makes you wonder what’s really at the bottom of connecting one’s identity to Grendel. And it only gets worse.
Ok. So Hrothgar’s Merry Men were happy in the hall, worshipping God to the tune of the scop:
till that one began
to work his wickedness, a fiend from hell,
Grendel was the name of this ghastly stranger,
famed wanderer in wastelands, who held the moors,
the fens and fastnesses. Once this unhappy beast
dwelt in the country of monstrous creatures,
after the Creator had condemned all those
among Cain’s kin—the eternal Lord
avenged the crime of the one who killed Abel.
For Cain got no joy from committing that wrong,
but God banished him far away from mankind.
From him all wicked offspring were born:
giants and elves, and evil demon-creatures,
and gigantic monsters—those who fought God,
time beyond time. But God repaid them!
So here we discover that Grendel is an unhappy beast, a ghastly fiend from hell who once dwelt in the country of monsters, but now haunts the wastelands. We also get a peek at Grendel’s ancestry. His progenitor is Cain, the world’s first murderer and a man cursed by God. On account of that curse, all of the monsters and demons, we’re told, are his offspring. The contrast is clear. Hrothgar’s Merry Men, even in the dim light of their paganism, are on Team Good, evidenced by their loud rejoicing in their Creator; while Grendel is on Team Evil, one of those who fights God and works wickedness. So it becomes abundantly clear now why Grendel is so pissed off. The joyful worship of God, to him, a God-fighter, is distress and torment. Some today might call it oppression.
Identifying with Grendel is identifying with opposing the Creator. The kith and kin of Grendel are giants, elves, evil demon-creatures, and gigantic monsters who fight God. Grendel is God’s enemy. Any interpretation of his origins, purpose, or actions which tell us to empathize with him is a demonic tactic. Don’t identify with evil. You’ll wind up saying and believing stupid things. Worse, you’ll wind up an enemy of God.
Instead, find fellow merry warriors. Grab a beer. Rejoice together in the great works of God. Drink up and sing loud enough to torment the demons.