Beowulf The Unnatural Essay

The unnatural hero

In todays world there are many people that we call heroes, fire fighters, policemen, and doctors. In the epic poem Beowulf during the time period of the Nordic society in 700 A.D. there are different types of heroes, heroes that fight sea monsters and other things that are creations of sin. In Beowulf Grendel is a monster born of sin , an unnatural birth while Beowulf is born form a father and a mother, a natural birth. Though both Beowulf and Grendel have enormous amounts of power and strength Beowulf was born from a supposed natural birth. When in fact the case is that both Beowulf and Grendel are both creatures created from unnatural births just   that they are two different sides of a spectrum. Society needs these two sides in order for them to cancel out otherwise there would be a world full of   pure evil or a boring bland world were no one would step out of line.
Grendel is a monster that was born of sin, he is the spawn of Cane. This is a sin because of the fact that he killed his own brother he became the creature of sin and therefore all his spawns are all creatures of sin. Though we do not get a physical description of Grendel the reader is lead to think of an ugly enormous creature due to the physical attributes that we are told of him. “he grabbed thirty form there resting places and rushed to his lair” (ll.121-122). Also we are also given metaphors to describe him “a fiend out of hell, began to work his evil into the world.” (ll.100-101) both of these descriptions of sorts lead us to think of an enormous ugly creature who is able to to kill thirty men with one sweep of his hands. This creature just because of the fact that he is born of sin and is a huge creature and doesn’t look like a normal person we tend to think that this creature is an unnatural being.
Beowulf is also born from an unnatural birth but the reader is blinded by the fact that Beowulf looks like a person and that he is the hero. As humans we want to relate...