Beowulf Differences Between Movie And Poem

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Sina Shorter Ms. Bast Advanced British Literature October 30, 2009 Beowulf: God? Or Flawed Man? Beowulf is a classic story of good vs. evil, where the hero triumphs over all even if he has to die trying. The 2007 animated representation of the story has many similarities and differences to the original story from the plotlines, to the dialog, to dramatic twists that were never even considered when Beowulf was first written. Right off the bat the movie and the poem are completely different, when King Hrothgar and all of his men are singing and celebrating it pains Grendel, who is hiding in his cave, to hear them so much he draws his own blood in fury, and then attacks them to stop the noise. He even splinters the door in his haste to kill them all. In contrast what causes Grendel to attack, in the poem, is not just that they are celebrating but more importantly that the bards are singing about god and his creation of the earth. This angers Grendel even more than the fact that they are celebrating and so he slaughters them while they sleep. Another difference in the poem and the movie is that in the poem Grendel is not able to kill King Hrothgar because his is protected by god while in the movie it is later revealed that the reason Grendel didn’t kill Hrothgar was because Hrothgar was Grendel’s father. Further differences include, that in the movie Grendel’s mother is not killed at all but instead manages to seduce Beowulf into giving her a demon son much like she did with Hrothgar to create Grendel. Many years later Grendel’s mother sicks his own demon son on him in the form of a dragon whom Beowulf is forced to kill with his own bare hands. Beowulf states in the movie before his fight with the dragon. “Keep a memory of me, not as a king or a hero; but as a man: fallible and flawed.” That is what I believe to be

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