Beowulf is a story that takes place in medieval Europe, the main part of the story is about a knight, Beowulf, that has to fight evil creatures such as a dragon. No one is exactly sure who wrote Beowulf, Paleographers believe from characteristics of the scribal hands that wrote the soul surviving text, that the manuscript was copied down in the late tenth century or early eleventh. This early copy of Beowulf is still around today. This single manuscript can be found in the British Library in London. Scholars believe that the story itself was written between 650-800. In the medieval, warriors were looked up to greatly. To die as a warrior was one of man's greatest achievements. Children adored them and women wanted to get with …show more content…
evil was another part of the story. Like just about any story, you must have a good guy and a bad guy. In this case u have Beowulf vs. Grendel and the dragon. Beowulf as I said earlier was viewed, as somewhat of a savior and Grendel is somewhat of a Satan type character, since Grendel wants to wipe out mankind. Pride is looked at as evil also, even though Beowulf had much pride in himself, he considered what he did selfless acts which was highly held up as good. Goodness is not only selfless acts though, but also the ability to pure and cleanse evil. After Beowulf slays Grendel, the poem says "(Beowulf) Had purged of evil the hall of Hrothgar, and cleansed of crime; the heart of the hero." All evil and crime done at Heorot was gone, and it was now ok to return to Heorot. Certain articles I have read about Beowulf say that, he was meant to win because Grendel was the descendant of Cain and God was not going to let the good guy die. Some other article also said that "evil never wins" but when you think about it evil does win sometimes because Grendel kills all the people in Heorot and Cain killed his brother. Evil does win …show more content…
Some people are not sure if Grendel is monster or human, he is a child of Cain yet in the story it says that, he is described as being strong enough to grab thirty men and rush to his lair, which is not human. Just because Grendel is banished from society, does not mean he is a monster. But Grendel kills people and eats them, which if he is human, cannibalism is not that odd, even now days people perform endo-cannibalism. The only monsteristic part would be that he could kill so many people with out weapons, which is nonhuman of this time. Most men in the medieval times treated their weapons as a child. The other monster of the poem is the dragon that appears at the end. Unlike Grendel, we all know for a fact that the dragon is a monster. The dragon is the evil of money in the story, Beowulf died trying to kill the dragon and take the gold. When they are both dying the money is brought out, and it is corroded and worthless, this part of the story reminds me of a movie I once saw called There Goes the Neighborhood, about an upper class neighborhood and one of the house's has a pile of money buried under it. As two groups of people battle it out for the money, they come to realize that the money had turned to mush, but it was to late for one group of people because they end up going to jail for a really long time and the other group has just about destroyed their own house.