When reading Grendel, I noticed that the original hero of the story, Beowulf, was portrayed almost as a monster. This was quickly disregarded in class; if not disregarded, then simply ignored. I, however, found this to be a profound description within the story Grendel. While we had previously read of a strong, powerful, supposedly good hero, Beowulf instead, in his fight with Grendel, uttered evil, biting remarks to Grendel, and at one point was described to have (correct me if I am wrong) flames protruding from the edges of his mouth in addition to his evil grin. These are not the qualities that we would normally see within a hero. Would we not usually expect our hero to remain focused more on the task at hand? Wouldn't we expect our hero to be less cruel with his words than the villain would be? And surely we would not picture a flaming mouth on our hero, would we? I feel that the author was trying to convey a message to mankind. This was almost as if he was trying to tell us all to take a step back and take a closer look at those that we view as 'heroes.' This is not news to me, however. In our society, the 'good guy' isn't always very good. The rich and successful CEO at the top of the corporate ladder is flawless to the young, fresh, innocent intern. The intern doesn't wish to see the (hopefully metaphorical) blood that this CEO has spilt, the evil that he has done. To the intern, he is a hero. It's the view of the leader of the rival corporation that shows this intern what is really in the CEO: evil. In a sense, we are the fresh, blind intern. We see only what we wish to see, and we refuse to see the evil in what we once saw as good.
I feel that the author of Grendel is trying to convey the idea that those we see as heroes are not all good, and those we view as villains are not all bad. One must take a closer look at the situation provided per character.
