14
Emboldened, Grendel reaches for his next victim – only to find himself
grappling with Beowulf himself. The monster soon realises he‘s bitten off more than
he can chew:
‘he ne mette middangeardes
, /
eorþan sceata on elran
men
/
mundgripe maran
‘ [‗he had not met in the world, in any corner of the earth, a
greater handgrip in another man‘], (ll. 751–53). In a stark reversal, the monster who
began the evening feasting on human flesh now finds that his own ‗
seonowe
onsprungon
, /
burston banlocan
‘ [‗sinews snapped, bone-locks burst‘], (ll. 817–18).
Grendel flees, but Beowulf never relinquishes his grip. Once the dust has settled,
our hero is left holding the monster‘s ‗
hond … earm ond eaxle … Grendles grape
‘
[‗hand … arm and shoulder … Grendel‘s grasp‘], (ll. 834–36).
The next character is Grendel‘s mother. It‘s fact that Grendel and his mother
take place crucial point to show the Beowulf‘s spiritual and mental power. Because
by the help of them Beowulf can reveal his bravery. So Grendel‘s mother:
Beowulf emerges from this first fight a bona fide hero. But we‘re only a third
of the way into the poem, and Grendel was only the start of Beowulf‘s monstrous
troubles. The very night after Grendel limps back to his lair, minus one arm, to die
in peace, the Danes are attacked again (ll. 1279–99).This time it‘s Grendel‘s mother,
looking for vengeance. Her appearance is similar to Grendel‘s, except ‗
idese
onlicnes
‘ [‗in the likeness of a woman‘], (l. 1351), but her attack differs in some
significant ways. Rather than wholesale destruction, she kills just one Dane before
fleeing home with her son‘s severed arm. The man she chooses is Æschere,
Hrothgar‘s closest advisor, in a tit-for-tat killing that‘s meant to match the loss of
her only son (ll. 1304–09). It‘s a point the poet drives home with a grim pun – just
as Beowulf took Grendel‘s ‗
earm ond eaxle
‘ [‗arm and shoulder‘], (l. 835), now
Grendel‘s mother has taken Hrothgar‘s ‗
eaxlgestealla
‘ [‗shoulder companion‘], (l.
1326).
15
In Beowulf we can come across and even we consider some characters like
monsters and heroes. If we speak by humanity side, from the beginning of life there
is two sides the evil and goodness. It‘s fact that the huge struggle between them has
been carrying out and mostly the goodness side have been the winner. We can see
this situation also in this epic poem between monsters and heroes.
If we push this reading further, though, things get more complicated. The
opposition between human and monster is far murkier than we might think,
especially when it comes to our hero. The first monster Beowulf fights is Grendel,
the epitome of isolation and social exclusion. But Beowulf, too, is somewhat
isolated. Like Grendel, he arrives in Denmark as an outsider, without warning and
‗
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