Beowulf

If I’m being honest, I thought Beowulf was really boring. For my British Literature class, our professor gave us two different videos to watch and the videos were miles better than the actual reading. One of the first videos we watched was a clip from the 2007 movie Beowulf and I honestly found it so old and dated that it was distracting, but I understood it’s purpose. The second video we watched was a snippet of the 1981 animated film Grendel, Grendel, Grendel and it was way better than the first clip not only because it had aged better but it was more interesting to watch. This is because these two videos showed two different perspectives and I really enjoyed Grendel’s perspective a lot more. His side was just more interesting and fresh because it was kinda like the guy who was never understood. I just like the idea of perspective because I feel it’s an important lesson to learn in real life too because some people do bad shit but to other people this “bad shit” is actually good for them because maybe they’re repressed or something crazy.

Now despite my personal opinions on Beowulf, this poem is a very important part of human history because it’s considered one of the first few written pieces in English. Yes, it is Old English but that eventually transformed into modern English(not the band!)so with some research and a translation guide you’ll be able to read the poem. When reading you’ll notice that rather than saying “Grendel’s mother” they say “she”, this is a literary concept known as Metonymy which is one of the things Beowulf is known for. Merriam Webster says Metonymy is “a figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated”. For example in Beowulf there’s a line in it that says “That shadow of death hunted in the darkness,” the “shadow of death” is supposed to represent Grendel and the “Darkness” represents night time.