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Good And Evil In Beowulf

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Good And Evil In Beowulf
We’ve grown quite a lot through time with technology, architecture, and even through our ideals. In the Beowulf the epic (Heaney 2000), we see right and wrong through the eyes of the past and it is strange to say the least. The author wrote this for their intended audience, meaning they were reflecting the cultural values of the ancient Anglo-Saxons. In the movie, Beowulf and Grendel (Gunnarsson 2005), we see changes from the original work that seems to match to modern ideas of right and wrong. Two characters, Hrothgar and Grendel, one who was a man of the light and kin of the dark respectively, were changed to match the ideals we hold today into completely different people that we had known them to be. In the epic, Hrothgar is the Lord and Protector of the Shieldings. Despite this, he was unable to save his people from the wrath of Grendel. When Beowulf arrived to the land of Dane, Hrothgar was regretful to even burden Beowulf with the strife that Grendel caused, which helps see that Hrothgar was a victim in all of this tragedy. He agreed to having Beowulf stay and kill the beast that plagued him. Later Grendel’s mother appeared, bringing pain and suffering with her because of the death of her son. …show more content…
With no backstory, all we learn is that a monster, a child of Cain, murdered 30 men out of the blue and soon everyone knew what terror he could bring. A cruel monster with an unknown grudge, he spread fear and sorrow into the lord of the Shieldings and no was able to stop him besides Beowulf. A monster who could only do wrong, destroying and removing men from this plane of life needed to be put down. Anglo-Saxons wanted a creature with no ties to this world, giving him the title of evil, “God-cursed brute”(121), so they could remove him from this world. If it killed men and was unnatural they would kill anything if it fit the
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