Beowulf by SparkNotes

Author:SparkNotes [SparkNotes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

(See Important Quotations Explained)

Analysis

The intensity of the epic increases in these lines, as its second part begins with the arrival of Grendel’s mother at the hall. The idea of the blood feud, which has been brought up earlier in the scop’s stories and in Hrothgar’s memory of the Wulfings’ grudge against Ecgtheow, now enters the main plot. Just as Grendel’s slaughter of Hrothgar’s men requires avenging, so does Beowulf’s slaying of Grendel. As Beowulf tells Hrothgar, in a speech with central importance to his conception of the heroic code of honor, “It is always better / to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning / . . . / When a warrior is gone, [glory] will be his best and only bulwark” (1384–1389). In this speech, Beowulf explicitly characterizes revenge as a means to fame and glory, which make reputations immortal. As this speech demonstrates, an awareness of death pervades Beowulf. That some aspect or memory of a person remains is therefore of great importance to the warriors. The world of the poem is harsh, dangerous, and unforgiving, and innumerable threats—foreign enemies, monsters, and natural perils—loom over every life.

One of the most interesting aspects of Grendel’s mother’s adherence to the same vengeance-demanding code as the warriors is that she is depicted as not wholly alien. Her behavior is not only comprehensible but also justified. In other ways, however, Grendel and his mother are indeed portrayed as creatures from another world. One aspect of their difference from the humans portrayed in the poem is that Grendel’s strong parent figure is his mother rather than his father—his family structure that is out of keeping with the vigorously patriarchal society of the Danes and the Geats. As Hrothgar explains it, “They are fatherless creatures, / and their whole ancestry is hidden” (1355–1356). The idea of a hidden ancestry is obviously suspect and sinister in this society that places such a high priority—a sacredness, even—on publicizing and committing to memory one’s lineage.

Grendel’s relation to Cain has been mentioned at several points in the story and is revisited here. Having Cain for an ancestor is obviously a liability from the perspective of a culture obsessed with family loyalty. Grendel’s lineage is therefore in many ways an unnatural one, demonic and accursed, since Cain brought murder, specifically murder of kin, into the world. As discussed earlier, it is possible to interpret Grendel and his mother, considering the unnaturalness of their existence, as the manifestation of some sort of psychological tension about the conquering and killing that dominate the Danish and the Geatish societies. Certainly, the humans’ feud with the monsters seems to stand outside the normal culture of warfare and seems to carry a suggestion of moral and spiritual importance.

The question of Grendel’s lineage is one of many examples of the Beowulf poet’s struggle to resolve the tension between his own Christian worldview and the obviously pagan origins of his narrative. The narrative’s origins lie in a pagan past, but by the time the poem was written down (sometime around 700 a.

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