In the story of Beowulf, Grendel’s mother is the most formidable opponent of Beowulf because she possesses human qualities that the other monsters do not. When Grendel is killed, Grendel’s mother’s motherly instincts kick in and she seeks revenge for her son. She acts on pure rage when she takes Hrothgar’s favorite warrior. This human quality of motherly instinct makes Grendel’s mother a terrifying opponent. Not only is she a vicious monster, she possesses this human characteristic that makes her not only a physical threat to Beowulf. She now proves to have a cognitive advance over her opposing monsters, Grendel and the dragon. Her ability to think like humans gives her a one-up on Beowulf. This quality helps to prove that Grendel’s mother …show more content…
By birthing such a fearful monster of a son, Grendel’s mother must serve to be a pretty awful monster herself. He learned from the best, his mother. By passing down her own thoughts and intimidating ways, Grendel became the scary monster that began killing
Hrothgar’s men. While some would argue that Grendel is the most formidable opponent of Beowulf, it can be argued that the fact that his mother also proves to be a dangerous, equal opponent of Beowulf and birthed Grendel makes her more of a risk than Grendel.
Women do not seem to get as much credit for being ferocious beings. In the tale of
Beowulf, Grendel’s mother is appreciated for her strength and “fierceness of a woman in fight”. It must be remembered that not only is Grendel’s mother a woman fighting to defend herself; she is a mother who just lost her child. In comparison to Grendel and the dragon, Grendel’s mother is the only monster with a purpose. She has something to fight for. Grendel just wanted to show his dominance over Hrothgar and his men. The dragon was trying to protect his “territory” that was not even his to beginning with. Grendel’s mother provokes Beowulf because he killed her son. This is one of the reasons Grendel’s mother is the most terrifying
Beowulf sees Grendel's mother in a cave. He tries to hit her with his sword, Unferth's Hrunting, but it fails to pierce her skin. So he throws the sword away and attacks the mother with his bare hands. He trusts "in his strength, his mighty hand-grip." Beowulf manages to throw Grendel's mother down; however, she quickly retaliates and is soon sitting on top of him. She tries to kill him with a dagger, but Beowulf's armor protects him this time. Beowulf managed to throw her off of himself and sees a sword of enormous size, which he immediately grabs.
They are both beastly, her more than him, and they both have different ways of living. Grendel is curious and wants to know more about his life and the purpose of living it; whereas, his mother stays in the cave and does not question anything. In the beginning he is frightened to be without her and does not stray far from their cave, but the more he grow the more the curiosity does as well. Grendel always relies on his mother to get him out of any dangerous situation he puts himself in, although she rarely follows through. Many times throughout the story we see Grendel’s disgust with his mother because of her inability to speak. He hates how more monstrous she is than he, and would rather go off by himself but deep down, he knows he truly needs her. Though she cannot actually speak, she tries to communicate with her son by caressing him and sometimes suffocating him in her breasts. One of the only times we see her speak is when Grendel asks his mother why they are here and stand to live in the cave and she responds, “Don’t ask!” (11). Grendel cannot fathom why they live in such terrible conditions and wonders what it would be like to live somewhere nice like the humans do, but he never goes against his mother.
The fact there is no mentioning of Grendel’s mother’s name implies that she is valuable insofar as her son is alive. This is could not further away from the truth because Grendel’s mother saved his life, and she is more powerful (Hala 39). Grendel acknowledges when he mentions “a shriek tens as loud as mine came blaring off the cliff. It was my mother!” (Gardner 27). While Grendel situates himself in danger, his mother comes along to save him from the situation that he placed himself into. Even though she has her own identity and persona, the novel never mentions her as something other than him. She is more powerful and dominant than Grendel physically, but because of the nature of her role, she becomes as subservient mother whose only function in life is to serve her son. She does not know anything besides her role as a mother, implying that mothers have no other role in life even they are talented or powerful. The novel is eroding the worth and value that comes from a mother because she has played an important role in raising Grendel. Because the book Grendel is trying to mimic the same world from when Beowulf is written, there are apparent contradictions when Gardner writes the mother “had forgotten all language long ago, or maybe never had never known any. I’d never heard her speak to the other shapes.” The mother is powerful and influential, but Grendel’s mother is continually portrayed is an unintelligent, useless being that has no independent worth beyond her
In the poem “Beowulf,” Grendel’s mother, a monstrous creature, is one of the three antagonists Beowulf, the main character, fights against. The battle against Grendel’s mother appears to be the strangest of the three battles. The main reason for its strangeness is that Grendel’s mother is the mother of the monster Grendel, who was killed by Beowulf in the first battle. Another reason for its strangeness is that Grendel’s mother is the only female-type creature. An alternative reason for this strangeness in the battle is due to the fact that Grendel’s mother is not a true monster, aside from her physical form. Through the explanation of kinship, the understanding of the missing words from the original text, and the comparison of Grendel’s mother to other mothers in the poem, specifically Welthow and Hildeburh, it can be established that the intentions of Grendel’s mother are not monstrous even though she has the appearance of a monster.
She lived in a place so terrorizing any animal would rather die than seek refuge in that marshy lake (437-440). However, Beowulf was no animal, he was the mighty conqueror of Grendel, and the only human that even dare fight the beast. Without hesitation he leaped into the lake, and swam for hours before finally reaching her resting place (467-469). Unlike the battle with Grendel, Beowulf had no men to help him, and therefore he struggled to defeat her. It took much fighting, and on occasion it looked as if this would be Beowulf last battle; however, in the end he would defeat her with her own dagger. Beowulf had the foresight to kill Grendel’s Mother because he knew she would also terrorize Hrothgar’s people if he was not to On the other hand, he did not have the foresight to understand that as he got older, he would have a much tougher time defeating the monsters. This is a lesson he would learn in his final battle, when he fights the almighty
Beowulf Grendel's mother is very powerful and weakens our hero with her charm and good
...atiently waits because she knows that the same person who slew her son would be coming after her as well. Beowulf’s pursuit of the mother is nothing more than another way to build his reputation because if he had slain Grendel and it got him such recognition, slaying both ogre’s would raise his reputation tremendously thus bringing him even closer to his name being secured on the cover of the history book. Him going after Grendel’s mother has nothing or very little to do with the fact that she is a woman, it however has everything to do with the fame he would get and the respect that would be associated with his name.
From the cantos to the movie we can already tell that Grendel’s mother has a different motivation and as well as where the fight is taken place at. We can tell as soon as we see Grendel’s mother for the first time in the film her intention was to have a child with Beowulf and not to fight, she is more calm and reserved than vicious as we read in the
Beowulf in his battle with Grendel overpowers him from the start and does not have much of a challenge against him, because Beowulf is already strong and has no doubt had countless battles before. “Beowulf,
Grendel’s mother was not evil she simply was avenging her only sons death. One might say that she is evil because she killed a man that took no part in her son’s death, but she was not there to witness the battle and no one came forward as guilty. No one paid her for her loss, unless one would say they paid her by taking her own life as well. Throughout this novel Beowulf kills multiple people and monsters, but not once does someone dare to accuse the heroic symbol to be evil. Grendel’s mother kills one man, and only in remorse for her only friend, her only family, her only son but is called “hell-dam” in other words the devil’s wife (1292). Therefore she is not evil, Grendel’s mother did what any mother would do if her son was murdered, especially in a society with a death
Some individuals believe that meeting a beautiful woman with bad intentions is the worst thing in the world. The way they portrayed Grendel’s Mother in the canto’s compared to the movie Beowulf (2007) was completely different. They explained her in the cantos as a huge, gross, disgusting monster. In Beowulf (2007) she is portrayed as the complete opposite, she is beautiful, fit, and does not even appear as a “monster”. Grendel’s Mother, in the book, is portrayed as a horrific monster of that society’s time, and in the movies, she is portrayed like a monster of today’s society, a beautiful woman with bad intentions.
The way he describes her in Beowulf is she is a very strong and fierce woman, that she can fight out 30 men. In the beginning of Grendel’s mother’s reading, he describes her in a way by writing about one of her battles that she has defeated. The poet later then describes the way she lives, she lives in a dark place of a forest in water. For example, on page 46 and 429th stanza the poet states “Growing out over their lake are all covered with frozen spray, and wind down snakelike roots that reach as far as the water and help keep it dark.” This helps describe the place that Grendel’s mother lives in. Grendel’s mother may have been a little bit stronger than Grendel but that never stopped Beowulf from fighting. He may not have been able to fight her as easily but he never gave
Beowulf is told by the King that Grendel's mother has "avenged the feud" (Abrams, 44). The king, once again, asks Beowulf to help him. Beowulf, upon seeing the king's condition, says:
It is because of these allusions to Cain that Grendel 's mother is worded in such an unholy image, and it is because of this unholy image that Beowulf is able to give himself the power of a normal human to superhuman. With the defeat of Grendel and his mother, Beowulf rises to a God-like figure throughout the land as he also sees himself being a God. By using Grendel 's mother as the trophy which gains Beowulf his superhero like status, the author is also giving a warning to all women, not to test man’s power. Beowulf is not just a story it’s history. Through its characters and the plot summary of the story the author reveals what society was at the time. Men were strong, women were weak. Honor and courage brought heroism, and heroism brought power. It 's not just an expression of opinion of Beowulf 's time, however, but a reflection of the world we live in today. Women have a different grasp in today’s society, a more powerful grasp. Consider the women are still subjugated by their husbands, or the women in politics who must work twice as hard to prove herself. Consider double
After Beowulf kills Grendel he goes after his mother because if Grendel was a descendant of Cain so was she. She did not do anything that was not reasonable. The Danes killed her son so she sought out revenge for killing her son. So the Danes found where the evil witch was living and attacked her. Beowulf killed the witch because she was evil just like Grendel. Since Grendel and his mother were descendants of Cain they were considered evil, and monsters. They were killed for honor and for Beowulf’s reputation. Later on in Beowulf’s life he encounters a fire breathing demon that was awoken by a thief that stole a goblet from the greedy beast. The dragon was seeking revenge on whoever took his goblet and was killed for it. The dragon was ugly and looked different than that of Geats so it was considered evil, and because it was destroying homes Beowulf killed the monster. The dragon was being prejudiced against because it was seeking revenge. It was angered that someone stole from him so it punished anybody and everybody that was nearby. Both Grendel's mom and the dragon were killed because they sought revenge for something that the Geats