Compare And Contrast Grendel And Beowulf

Natalie Martin

Henning/Lunn

AP Language and Composition

17 August 2014

Beowulf vs. Grendel In life, people are always told to be good. Parents tell their children not to steal, hit, or kick. As a society most people are taught to do the right thing. So, what happens if someone is bad? There are hardly any stories written about the bad person. The epic poem, Beowulf by Seamus Heaney, is written about the “bad guy”. While Grendel, by John Gardner, and also the book that comes after Beowulf, is written about the “good guy”. There are many other differences in the writing styles other then, one book is about the good person and the other the bad. Beowulf and Grendel both use kennings and alliteration, are written in different time periods, and

A kenning is an expression used in Old English with a meaning that can be translated to New English. An example of a kenning can be found on one of the first five pages of the poem. It states, “They stretched their beloved lord in his boat, laid out by the mast, amidships, the great ring-giver” (Heaney 5). A ring-giver is a king. In this quote the narrator, a Christian, is talking about Shield and how they had to bury him. Shield, was the king. An example of an alliteration in Beowulf is, “The wide water, the waves and pools” (Heaney 111). The word alliteration means that there is an occurrence of the same letter or sound around the words in the sentence. Wide water, has the same letter, so therefore it is an

For example in lines 738-739 Heaney writes, “Nor did the creature keep him waiting but struck suddenly and started in…” (Heaney 51-52). It shows that Heaney was awaiting Beowulf to start the fight. Heaney did not even give Grendel a chance to start the fight but instead just lets Beowulf dive right into the fight. In Grendel, John Gardner, writes with a more collected tone. For example Gardner writes, “He gave his head a jerk, as if clearing his brains, then turned and loped back to where he’d charged from me before. He’d struck too low, and even in my terror I understood that he would always strike too low: he fought by instinct, blind mechanism ages old” (Gardner 21). Grendel uses more of a sense of knowledge, unlike Beowulf. Beowulf just does, he does not think before he acts. Grendel actually plans out what he is going to do before he does