"Sea against sand; they stowed away
In the hold of the ship their shining armor...
Will the seamen that sailed her sighted the land
Shining cliffs and coastwise hills," (p14, ln 74-83)
The use of consonance here repeats the sound of the wind. Beowulf and his men are going to go save the Danes. They must cross the sea and the wind acts very favorable and leads them to the way. The "s" sound imitates the sound of a swift and light wind, not a treacherous gust.
"Foam on her breast, like a bird she flew;" (p 14, ln79)
This quote uses personification and smile. The author personifies the ship calling it a she. One refers to ships often as female, but it also gives the ship qualities of tender and nurture. The ship guides them the right
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He realizes that no one can hurt him. Now that he knows that, he kills more often simply for sport. This turns him from misunderstood to a monster.
This also isolates him even further. Not only can he not communicate with anyone, but also now that no one can hurt him, he nothing affects him. He is isolated.
"The room goes suddenly white, as if struck by lightening. I stare down, amazed. He has torn off my arm at the shoulder! Blood pours down where the limb was." (p172)
Grendel's tragic downfall of his death by Beowulf is cause by his self-belief. He believes no one can hurt him so he approaches Beowulf instead of running away. If he was aware of Beowulf, and realized that he was not like the other men, and instead of thinking, nothing can hurt him, he might have survived.
The Snow Man
"And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter"(ln 4-6)
Enjambment in the poem sets the mood. The mood is that as of a snowfall, quiet cold, settled and slow. The poem does not need to rush its thoughts into a sentence or a stanza. By separating the thoughts into different lines and stanzas forces the reader to read slowly as that of a snowfall. The reader reads the poem peacefully, which depicts the images of a peaceful snow, covered forest.
"Of any misery in the sound of the wind
In the sound of a few leaves,
which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
What is blowing in
One of the first things Grendel learned about humans is their knowledge and way of thinking. Through different difficult situations, Grendel learned that humans are much more dangerous than any wild animal as they are capable strategy makers. We can clearly see this at the second chapter, when he is
How is your understanding and attitude impacted when Beowulf’s fight against Grendel is described from Grendel’s point of view?
Like many whom suffer the same disorder, Grendel completely changed his mind, extending from one topic to the exact opposite. He goes against his own ideas as if he were two totally opposing characters. He also always thought the dragon was near. Grendel allowed the ways and beliefs of the dragon to get in his head. He would claim he could “smell the dragon’s scent” whenever something sinister occurred. All of these symptoms, in addition to the isolation from Hrothgar’s people lead to the overall cause in withdrawal from society. Grendel’s emotional disturbances caused him to react completely unreasonable and rather foolish many times within his life.
Grendel was most likely on high alert before killing those few men, but after he was relaxed and just enjoying another senseless night of killing. Beowulf’s waiting for Grendel to relax gave him a key advantage in their fight. Equally important, waiting for Grendel to kill some of his men allowed Beowulf the chance to see how Grendel operated. As a result, Beowulf gained another advantage in this fight.
When Beowulf hears about Grendel, he feels that it is his duty to stop Grendel from killing anymore, Beowulf leaves to go to Herot to destroy him. Beowulf is mostly being applaud for his long journey to face this terrible monster. Beowulf says, “Grendel is no braver, no stronger than I am! I could kill him with my sword: I shall not” (line 677). Beowulf feels
Another literary element that offer meaning to the poem is imagery, by simply allowing the readers to envision the events of the story. In the first part of the story (129-134), Beowulf is described as coming over “seas beating at the sand” while “the ship foamed through the sea like a bird.” This scene truly guides the readers to admire the vivid description of how proud and tough the ship looks. This ship in this case, becomes a metonymy for Beowulf himself, who is certainly proud and strong, resulting in the readers’ admiration. Additional imagery is used describing the mere, or lake, discussed above, with “storms [an] waves splash[ing] towards the sky, as dark as the air as black as the rain that the heavens weep” (440-442). This clearly illustrates how dreadful Grendel and his mothers’ home is. It intensely aids us to picture how grotesquely unpleasant the lake actually is. Near the end of the tale (lines 651-653], Beowulf “[strides] with his shield at his side and a mail shirt of his breast….. Toward the tower, under the rocky cliffs.” While Beowulf awaits the battle, the description of his armor and the details of each entry help us to respect how ready he is for his concluding battle. Even as an elderly man, Beowulf is a hero beyond compare. In closing, the use of imagery greatly enriches the readers’ experience of this heroic epic.
In Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, Grendel is nothing but an evil fiend that needs to be slain, “a fiend out of hell, began to work his evil in the world” (Heaney 9). Grendel is portrayed as an evil monster that has only been wreaking havoc and terrorizing a kingdom for an extended amount of time because it thrives on the pain of others. Seamus states, “Malignant by nature, he never showed remorse” (Heaney 10). Grendel is made out to appear as little more than a monster, “insensible to pain and human sorrow” (Heaney 11). He is portrayed to have little to no human qualities, to be the furthest thing from
All because he is a monster. Being the monster that he was, he never had it easy. The story states, “‘Surround him!" the king yelled, "Save the horses!"—and suddenly I knew I was dealing with no dull mechanical bull but with thinking creatures, pattern makers, the most dangerous things I'd ever met. I shrieked at them, trying to scare them off, but they merely ducked behind bushes and took long sticks from the saddles of their horses, bows and javelins. "You're all crazy," I bellowed, "you're all insane!’” Here, Grendel is almost about to be killed because of his appearance. The king only thinks of him as a threat because he looks like a monster. Others may say that Grendel had it coming. However, the author’s intentions are clear that he wants the reader to sympathize with Grendel not having a fair chance in life because of how he
He then slashed at it with his sword. At that instant he dropped his sword because it was doing no damage to the monster. He raised the beast and threw her to the floor. But she rose and began slashing at him, he fell to the ground. She drew her dagger and was ready to avenge her son but Beowulf’s chain mail saved him. Beowulf got back on his feet and grabbed a sword that was hanging on the wall it looked like it was hammered by the gods. He lifted it over his head and stuck the beast with all the strength he had left in his body. He ripped through bone and all. Beowulf rose from the water and all the Geats stood there
Grendel’s emotions drive him to do theses harmful actions that are seen as evil, but he has no other way to show his emotion. The lack of communication has been just as much the humans fault as it was Grendel's. Grendel did not fail to recognize his flaw in doing these actions. Grendel did not want to live this way, but society and the lack of communication corrupted his life in ways that forced him to do these horrific things. Grendel says, “I feel my anger coming back, building up like invisible fire, and at last, when my soul can no longer resist” (Page 4). This exemplifies
But for Grendel, Beowulf that swore that he was going to defeat Grendel and avenge the deaths of his soldiers that Grendel killed. One day Grendel went up to the mead hall to attack more of Beowulf’s soldiers, but it was a trap and Beowulf comes out attacks him. They engage in a gruesome battle and in the end Beowulf rips off Grendel's arm, which causes him to retreat. He then bled out and died on his way back
First, Grendel is an angry demon who has been attacking Hrothgar’s Kingdom and hurting the villagers for twelve years. Some people refer Grendel as, “Grim demon”. Beowulf is informed about Grendel destroying the kingdom and hurting innocent people. One night Grendel had struck Beowulf’s men with his brutal strength. After Grendel slaughtered all the men, Beowulf walked up to Grendel tried to grab, but Beowulf grabbed Grendel’s arm and held onto him with a firm grip. Grendel was trying his best to escape Beowulf because of his brute strength. For example, “you could hear Grendel’s claws cracking.” Beowulf through Grendel’s urge to rip Grendel’s whole arm and part of his chest off. Beowulf watched as Grendel died slowly from the amount of blood loss.
“That shadow of death hunted in the darkness, stalked Hrothgar 's warriors, old and young, lying in waiting, hidden in mist, invisibly following them from the edge of the marsh, always there, unseen” (Beowulf 2: Line 74). Grendel was smart and a slithery serpent. He did not wish
To begin, one of the many ways that Beowulf was different than Grendel is that Beowulf was brave. Every night Grendel snuck into Herot Hall to destroy King Hrothgar’s men. He did this while hiding in the shadows, sneaking around in the dead of night, and attacking while the men we asleep and at there most vulnerable. These are not the characteristics the brave, these are the characteristics of a foul, loathsome, cowardly beast. Mean while, Beowulf liked to meet a problem head on, in this case the problem was Grendel himself. Determined Beowulf sailed to Denmark to defeat Grendel, telling Hrothgar that he will take Grendel’s life with his bare hands. As told in the story, “ That mighty protector of men/ Meant to hold the monster till it’s life/ leaped out” (Raffel, 1963, l. 366-368). And when Beowulf got the chance to do just that, Grendel took the cowards road, “Grendel’s one thought
It may be that at one point Grendel was a human much like Beowulf. "Yet, so as to save his life, he left behind his hand, his arm and shoulder" (957-959). He has the appearance of a man and he has a mother, but the humanness of Grendel has disappeared, and what remains is a creature that as the text says, "the Creator had condemned." Instead of saying that Grendel was just a real bad guy, through these descriptions, he has taken on a supernatural or mystical quality. God was even concerned enough to curse Grendel for his atrocities.