From line 703 to 982, It talks about the fight between Beowulf and Grendel. In summary, knowing that Grendel is envious, resentful, and angry toward mankind, and Grendel especially resents the light, joy, and music he observes in Hrothgar's beautiful mead-hall called Heorot. Therefore, Beowulf and his warriors sang poetry and music to kind of spice up the vibe in Heorot. During the night of, Grendel bursts into Heorot. He tears the door from its hinges with his bare hands and immediately devours a Geatish warrior while Beowulf carefully observes. To me, this is probably the most excited part, because in my previous log, I have mentioned, in the story, it didn’t specify whether Grendel is a male or female, but the story made Grendel sounds like a man, so it's quite hard for me to imagine a giant man eating another man in the bloody way so easily.
Then when Grendel reaches out to snatch up Beowulf, he is stunned to find his arm gripped with greater strength than he knew possible. He was terrified like a cornered animal, Grendel was about longing to run back to the safety of the swamplands. But Beowulf took him down just in second. The combatants crash around the hall, rattling the walls and smashing the mead-benches. Grendel begins to shriek in pain and fear; the sound terrifies all who hear it. Beowulf’s men heroically hack at the demon as Beowulf fights with him, but no weapon on earth is capable of harming Grendel. Beowulf summons even greater strength and rips Grendel’s arm completely out of its socket. Fatally wounded, Grendel slinks back to his swampy home to die. Back in the mead-hall, Beowulf holds up his glory trophy in triumph. He proudly hangs the arm high on the wall of Heorot as proof of his victory.
In the battle against Grendel, was so full of determination that he was willing to bear arms and fight with Grendel. When Beowulf fought Grendel, he fought with a courageous and confident attitude, and I believe that his attitude is what made him win, because his attitude gave him the confidence that he needed to stand in front of a huge monster and fight for victory. But when Beowulf won the battle he wasn't satisfied with just knowing his victory, because after the fight, which I didn't mentioned, he actually cut off Grendel 's arm and mounted it as a trophy of his victory, showing the world how foolhardy his attitude was, proving that a victory isn't enough to satisfy his needs. So my conclusion is that, is good to show that you are a courageous and confident person, but make sure to stay humble too, otherwise it will make others think you are just too hypocritical.
Hi, Michelle.
ReplyDeleteWow, reading poetry is already a challenging thing for me, and what you choose is the English epic poem! To be honest, the choice really impressed me.(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ For me, to realize what the author wants to convey is the most difficult thing to read poetry because I don't know most of the meaning of poetry, so how could I comprehend the author's emotions and thoughts. After reading your log 4, I went back to read your previous record, and I seemed to keep up with the poem's plot. This time, you are mainly talking about the fights between Beowulf and Grendel in this log. I saw the characteristic of Beowulf shows concern about his reputation and aggressive ambition during the whole battle, and the reason is that he was not favored in the early stage of fighting. Thus, he was eager to prove his strength and not reconciled to just "victory," as you said above. In my opinion, although Beowulf cuts off Grendel's arm as the "successful fruit" of his victory, it is more of a sense of security and authenticity that Beowulf seeks for his own abilities. Thus, his action let me think that he might be a person who lacks confidence or lack of sense of identity. However, I have the same opinion as you, "modesty" is a character that we need to learn, no matter how strong we are.
It's interesting that this is my first time knowing this type of literature genre. That must be challenging to read, for me, but out of nowhere, I reckon it fits you well with the image of you riding moto(?
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Grendel and 'his' gender, I have a little thought: maybe he doesn't have a gender? This heroes legend was transmitted orally, I have a big speculation that they didn't presume any gender for Grendel, which didn't limited from listeners' imagination with gender.
I agreed with you, a courageous and confident person could as well be the humblest at the same time. I think in our culture, people are educated to be humble from young age, but only conscious to that when being told we're lack of confidence. What do you think?