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Lauren Risberg
Ms. Stegmiller
British Literature E
21 October 2008
The War Against Paganism
The story of Beowulf occurs in a pagan society that adheres to a code favoring
authoritarianism, vengeance, and material wealth – all of which are values that led
the Anglo-Saxons into a chaotic lifestyle full of wars with neighboring tribes and
cutthroat vendettas against their brothers. In this Anglo-Saxon epic poem, their wars
with neighbors are replaced with wars against demons, but the same drive for blood
and wealth remains in their monstrous fictitious enemies and continues to wreak
death and destruction. The evil monsters in Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney,
are motivated by pagan principles that are also taboos of Christianity, and their
portrayal in the poem eventually paves the way towards stabilization of the chaotic
pagan culture through Christianity.
Jealousy is one such Christian taboo that leaks into Heorot and Beowulf must
meet and battle with in the form of Grendel. First, in the Christian Bible, jealousy
appears in stories that demonstrate the horrible possibilities that could arise if one
indulges in envy. In the story of Cain and Abel, for example, jealousy is the
iniquitous human emotion that ultimately leads to fratricide and exile. The Bible
clearly states that jealousy is a treacherous human fault that can be dangerous:
“Jealousy is cruel as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a most vehement
flame”(Song of Songs 8:6). Christians are encouraged to let go of their envy, but the
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inhuman fiend, Grendel, initially appears in Beowulf as a monster who is absolutely
consumed by greed and resentment:
A powerful demon, a prowler through the dark,
nursed a hard grievance. It harrowed him
to hear the din of the loud banquet
every day in the hall, the harp being struck
and the clear song of a skilled poet
telling with mastery of a man’s beginnings. (lines 86–91)
As an outsider and unwelcome guest, Grendel, the ‘demonic prowler of the
dark’, is enraged by the sounds of merriment coming from the Danes’ halls, pleasures
that he will never be able to partake in due to his banishment. This exile from society
has alienated him so much that he is driven to forcefully invading the Heorot and
antagonizing his hosts. Grendel is portrayed as a manifestation of an anti-Christ
character, another alias of Cain, who is consumed by his greed and jealousy of
organized society. Not only is Grendel a slithering example of jealousy gone too far,
but also a literal manifestation of the lurking enemies outside of the Danes’ windows:
the constant fear of attack from guests who take more than they are offered. When
Beowulf fights against Grendel in the battle to take back the Heorot, it is not just a
battle of protection and honor, but also reinforces the fear of what could happen if we
allow strange and foreign guests into our homes. In the end, Grendel’s role as a
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snarling fiend in the story shows us the Anglo-Saxons’ acknowledgment of the
destructive outcomes of envy.
In the minds of the human characters, there are also allegories of man’s constant
struggle with our own tendencies towards jealousy, such as Unferth’s speech
challenging Beowulf’s exploits. “Unferth, a son of Ecglaf’s, spoke / contrary words.
Beowulf’s coming, / his sea-braving, made him sick with envy”(lines 502 – 503). The
indignant Unferth is extremely bitter and resentful of Beowulf’s accomplishments,
and as such he is portrayed as ‘sick with envy,’ a negative depiction that shows us
another fear of where envy can lead. Not only does this obvious jealousy make him a
clearly defined antagonist but Unferth is also a known kin-slayer, the most evil crime
that can possibly be committed in this ancient society. This mark of shame and his
brooding verbal attack on Beowulf show us the recognition of monstrous qualities
that are dreadfully prevalent in humanity.
The next monster that expresses a Biblical sin, vengeance, is the lamenting
mother of Grendel who is driven into a wrathful frenzy because of the murder of her
son. Barely a day after the death of Grendel, his mother makes her appearance as an
embodiment of devilish influences, seething with anger and desire for retribution:
“But now [Grendel’s] mother / had sallied forth on a savage journey, / grief-racked
and ravenous, desperate for revenge”(lines 1277–1279). Not only is Grendel’s mother
portrayed as fanatical with anger beyond all hope of forging a truce, but also her
desperation for vengeance turns her into a ‘ravenous savage,’ a creature totally
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inhuman and terrifying that invalidates all of her human qualities, a monster beyond
all hope of redemption. The Bible states: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a
grudge against the sons of your own people”(Leviticus 19:18). Revenge in any form is
not advocated by Christianity, yet it is rife amongst the overbearing human
characters, such as Beowulf, and also the monster characters. Grendel’s mother does
not spare even a minute before storming the sleeping Heorot and attempting to
avenge her son’s murder. Grendel’s mother is not the only character in the poem
who is guilty of this crime against Christianity; the Danes lose many beloved men
when Grendel sieges their hall, and they also desire reprisal for their fallen.
However, due to the beliefs of their warrior society that clash with Christianity, they
have their own rules that justify attacks against demons. Beowulf claims that: “It is
always better / to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning”(lines 1384 – 1385).
The Anglo-Saxons see the reprisal that Grendel’s mother covets as foreign and
malicious, the savage desire of a demonic, nonhuman enemy, which to them
distinctly differentiates from their own desire to repay the deaths of their good
kinsmen. They thought that her retaliation was unsubstantiated, while theirs was
justified murder. This egocentric mentality effectively allowed the Anglo-Saxons to
pursue their own fights by battling vengeance with vengeance. It was back-and-forth
disputes like these that created intricate webs of unpaid debts between the warring
pagan tribes, and Grendel’s mother represents another foreign threat hungering to
collect its due that Beowulf thinks he needs to neutralize. Therefore, Christianity’s
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claim that vengeance is a heinous crime was quickly welcomed by the Anglo-Saxons
who had lost their loved ones to their own obsession with violent retribution.
Grendel’s mother’s motivations are yet another instance of the poet illustrating the
folly in pagan values, and he gives us a calamitous image of what vengeance really
looks like.
Finally, another aspect of pagan religion that plays a huge part in their lives and
motivations is the possession of material wealth. The Bible states: “take heed, and
beware of all covetousness; for a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his
possessions”(Luke 12:15). Christianity urges its followers to abandon their
attachments to material goods, for the value of life is not measured by physical
objects. The gold-hoarding dragon, however, exists solely for the protection of his
earthly treasures, and when a single goblet is stolen from him, he is immediately
frenzied with vehement disregard for human life:
So the guardian of the mound,
the hoard-watcher, waited for the gloaming
with fierce impatience; his pent-up fury
at the loss of the vessel made him long to hit back
and lash out in flames. (lines 2302–2306)
The furious dragon is a perfect example of the intent behind Christianity’s urge to let
go of materials. The creature is so attached to a mere golden goblet that he is
instantly enraged with the desire to violently lash out against the thief and anyone
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who stands in his way as soon as the goblet is stolen from him. However, material
wealth, according to Christianity, does not ascend with us to the next life, which
means that the lengths that the dragon goes to only to protect his earthly treasures are
a waste of his life and the lives of the innocents that he kills in his rampage.
Beowulf, too, falls into the same trap of holding treasure in higher priority than
his own life: “I shall win the gold / by my courage, or else mortal combat, / doom of
battle, will bear your lord away”(lines 2535–2538). Although he does believe he is
earning wealth to pass on to his people, Beowulf does not risk his life on the necessity
of needing to save his men’s lives or to fulfill his duty as shield to his people. In fact,
there is no evidence in the text that implies that he is required to fight the dragon at
all; he fights the dragon solely for his own desire for treasure and glory, which are
fallible rewards that, according to Christianity, will do him no good once he passes
away. The ancient dragon that exists for nothing more than to protect his hoard is an
exemplar of what could happen if someone took the pagan emphasis on wealth too
far: an empty existence based on nothing but mortal objects that have no meaning in
the Christian afterlife. The pagan societies place such a high value on material wealth
that Beowulf ends up paying the ultimate price: the dragon claims his life, and the
Geat people suffer for generations to come in his absence:
[Beowulf’s] royal pyre
will melt no small amount of gold:
heaped there in a hoard, it was brought at a heavy cost,
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and that pile of rings he paid for at the end
with his own life will go up with the flame,
be furled in fire: treasure no follower
will wear in his memory, nor lovely woman
link and attach as a torque around her neck–
but often, repeatedly, in the path of exile
they shall walk bereft, bowed under woe,
now that their leader’s laugh is silenced,
high spirits quenched. (lines 3010-3021)
In a futile sacrifice, Beowulf robs the Geats of both the blood-marked treasure and
their finest ruler through the loss of his own life. The narrator places significant
emphasis on the Geats’ war-torn future to show the havoc that Beowulf’s covetous
behavior brought to them. They will ‘walk bereft, bowed under woe,’ all hope for
survival burned up with the body of their leader. Beowulf’s material-driven sacrifice
results in no joy at all for his people, and the treasure he died for will never be worn
by his people in his memory, for the objects that Beowulf sold his life for become
useless as soon as he is no longer alive protect the Geats’ assets. The prospect of
possessing treasure brings the Geats no comfort when they face the bleak, kingless
future ahead of them; in fact, having the treasure would make them an even larger
target for oppressors that desire to enslave them. Without a strong leader, the Geats
are vulnerable to attack and certainly unable to protect themselves, let alone
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safeguard a dragon’s hoard, all because of Beowulf’s selfish gamble with his life.
Starkly contrasting with Christianity’s detachment from physical materials, the pagan
obsession with material wealth leads the Anglo-Saxon communities into chaos and
their own destruction.
The loathing of pagan values like vengeance and materialism began long before
Christianity was introduced into the feudal world. It began in tales like Beowulf,
where the heroes fought against monsters that represented their own faults, and nonChristian codes claimed the lives of countless innocents before the ideals of virtuous
commandments appeared instead of paganism. Although the monsters in Beowulf are
described as sinister creatures that are inhuman and alien to the core, their
motivations show us the internal struggles and fears that the Anglo-Saxons had about
their own nature and reflect these fears in their behavior. The poet created these
flawed antagonists as representatives of the Christian view on the pagan belief system,
painting it as a religion of sinners and coveters, while all the time placing a sparkling
crown upon the head of the Christian god by incorporating him into an evidently
pagan story. Historically, Beowulf’s time period was followed by the conquest of
Christianity, certainly due in no small part to the negative portrayals of pagan values
in pieces of Anglo-Saxon literature such as Beowulf. Ultimately, the Anglo-Saxons
embraced Christianity, which served as an opposite of the spectrum, a solution to the
pagan system that their heroes, like Beowulf, were already fighting against in its most
gruesome and tangible forms.
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Works Cited
Beowulf. (Translator: Heaney, Seamus). New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000.
The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952.
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Revision Statement:
I have condensed the thesis into a single sentence to make it more concise and I have
split up the two longest paragraphs into separate paragraphs. I have also totally
revised the ‘wealth’ paragraph and made it more closely tie to the quote, how and
what the Geats are losing as Beowulf passes away, etc. Finally, I have added a major
theme to the conclusion paragraph that relates the conclusion to the poet’s motivation
behind personifying the antagonists with pagan values.
Lauren Risberg
October 1, 2008
Ms. Stegmiller
British Literature
Beowulf Essay Outline
-Are these monsters truly monstrous? Each monster represents a different aspect of
humanity that we fight – Grendel = jealousy, Grendel’s mother = vengeance, the
Dragon = desire for material wealth.
GRENDEL – motivated by human emotions
-Loneliness, jealousy
P41
“he had dwelt for a time in misery among the banished monsters, / Cain’s clan, whom
the Creator had outlawed / and condemned as outcasts.” Lines 105 – 108
“spurned and joyless,” line 720
“the dread of the land was desperate to escape, / to take a roundabout road and flee /
to his lair in the fens.”
“Like a man outlawed for wickedness, he must await the mighty judgment of God in
majesty.” 976 – 979
“Beowulf in his fury / now settled that score: he saw the monster / in his resting place,
war-weary and wrecked, / a lifeless corpse, a casualty / of the battle in Heorot.” 1583
“once death removed that murdering, guilt-steeped, God-cursed fiend” 1682
“Unferth, a son of Ecglaf’s, spoke / contrary words. Beowulf’s coming, / his seabraving, made him sick with envy” 502 - 503
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BIBLE: Galatians 5:26 says, “Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying
each other.”
Song of Songs (Song of Solomon) 8:6, says "jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals
thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame."
GRENDEL’S MOTHER – motivated by vengeance, just like the humans
“But now his mother / had sallied forth on a savage journey, / grief-racked and
ravenous, desperate for revenge.” 1277 – 1279
“Her onslaught was less / only by as much as an amazon warrior’s / strength is less
than an armed man’s when the hefted sword, its hammered edge / and gleaming blade
slathered in blood, / razed the sturdy boar-ridge off a helmet.” 1283 – 1289
“The hell-dam was in panic, desperate to get out, / in mortal terror of the moment she
was found.” 1292 - 1293
“The bargain was hard, / both parties having to pay with the lives of friends.” 1304 –
1305
“And the old lord, / the grey-haired warrior, was heartsore and weary / when he
heard the news: his highest-placed adviser, / his dearest companion, was dead and
gone.” 1307 – 1310 (COMPARISON)
“and now this powerful / other one arrives, this force for evil driven to avenge her
kinsman’s death.” 1338 – 1340
“It is always better to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning.” 1384 – 1385
“So she pounced upon him and pulled out a broad, whetted knife: now she would
avenge / her only child.” 1544 -5
“Death had robbed her, / Geats had slain Grendel, so his ghastly dam / struck back
and with bare-faced defiance / laid a man low.” 2119 – 1222
THE DRAGON – motivated by treasure, was stolen from, only wants to reclaim
what’s his.
“a dragon on the prowl / from the steep vaults of a stone-roofed barrow / where he
guarded a hoard; there was a hidden passage, / unknown to men, but someone
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managed / to enter by it and interfere / with the heathen trove. He had handled and
removed / a gem-studded goblet; it gained him nothing, / though with a thief’s wiles
he had outwitted the sleeping dragon; that drove him into rage, / as the people of that
country would soon discover.”
“For three centuries, the scourge of the people had stood guard on the stoutly
protected / underground treasury, until the intruder / unleashed its fury” 2280
“When the dragon awoke, trouble flared again. / He ripped down the rock, writhing
with anger / when he saw the footprints of the prowler who had stolen / too close to
his dreaming head.” Prowler – used to describe both the human thief and the dragon
“hoard-guardian” 2295
“So the guardian of the mound, the hoard-watcher, waited for the gloaming with
fierce impatience; his pent-up fury / at the loss of the vessel made him long to hit
back and lash out in flames.” 2350
“Everywhere the havoc he wrought was in evidence. / Far and near, the Geat nation
bore the brunt of his brutal assaults and virulent hate.” 2318 – 2319
“After many trials, he was destined to face the end of his days / in this mortal world;
as was the dragon, / for all his long leasehold on the treasure.” 2342 – 2344
“I shall win the gold / by my courage, or else mortal combat, / doom of battle, will
bear your lord away.” 2535 – 2538
“Roused to a fury, / each antagonist struck terror in the other.” 2564 – 2565
Hrothgar warns: “Choose, dear Beowulf, the better part, / eternal rewards. Do not
give way to pride. / For a brief while your strength is in bloom / but it fades quickly;
and soon there will follow illness of the sword to lay you low, / or a sudden fire or
surge of water / or jabbing blade or javelin from the air / or repellent age.” 1760