Prey Tell: How Heroes Perceive Monsters in "Beowulf"

Author(s): Ward Parks

Source: The Journal of English and Germanic Philology , Jan., 1993, Vol. 92, No. 1
(Jan., 1993), pp. 1-16
Published by: University of Illinois Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27710761

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 Prey Tell: How Heroes Perceive
Monsters in Beowulf

Ward Parks, Louisiana State University

Since ancient times, the bestiality of man has been a topic of such
resonance in the discourse of high culture as to suggest that it strikes
upon deep tensions in the human psyche. While certain features of
this problematic relationship between the human and infrahuman are
fairly stable, in different eras it has been conceived through radically
differing paradigms. The Christian ascetic, for example, while ac
knowledging the bestial within the human soul, castigated it as the
source of fleshly temptations that distract the pilgrim in his ascent to
God. Seeking a mechanism of relationship on the material rather than
the spiritual plane, Charles Darwin shocked the religious sensibilities
of his day by postulating that the kinship is genetic and evolutionary,
that man is literally descended from the ape. In the last few decades,
the rapidly maturing sciences of ethology and sociobiology have vastly
enlarged the body of evidence concerning the social behavior of
higher life forms and the role of such patterns in an evolutionary
process.1 In this study I would like to bring some of these modern
behavioral perspectives to bear on an ancient poet's delvings into the
same basic issue. For the ambiguous standing of the Beowulf monsters,
and more specifically the liminality of the brood of Grendel, who is
neither fully human nor fully bestial, is an essential defining charac
teristic of the particular challenge to human community that the poet
wishes to pose. And Beowulf's response, heavily laden with symbolic
gesture, is designed to reconstitute this catastrophe in terms accept
able to the heroic world view.
The fundamental ambivalence that Grendel embodies and that

1 Pioneering works include Niko Tinbergen's The Herring Gull's World: A Study of the
Social Behavior of Birds, rev. ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1961); Konrad Lorenz's On
Aggression, trans. Marjorie Kerr Wilson (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966);
and Edward O. Wilson's Sociobwlogy: The New Synthesis (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap
Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 1975), which played a major role in establishing the field
that its title denominates. For more recent introductions, see David P. Barash, Sociobiol
ogy and Behavior (New York: Elsevier, 1982); and Robert Trivers, Social Evolution (Menlo
Park, Calif.: Benjamin/Cummings, 1985).

Journal of English and Germanic Philology?January

? 1993 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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2 Parks

Beowulf must resolve relates to the distinction between predatorial

and agonistic aggression. In brief, Grendel wants to ravage like a
predator, whereas Beowulf insists on contesting with him like a con
specific adversary (that is, as a member of the same biological species).
The association between the poem's horrific imagery and mood?
especially in its early movements?and the theme of pr?dation is very
clear. Consider the famous passage that immediately precedes the
Beowulf-Grendel encounter. The agl ca (monster) has just made his
way from the dark and misty moors into the great Danish hall of Heo
rot, finding there a delectable comitatus of savory, sleeping Geats.2 See
ing no need for delay, Grendel proceeds directly to the feast:

ac h? gef?ng hra?e forman si?e

slaependne rinc, sl?t unwearnum,
b?t b?nlocan, bl?d ?drum dranc,
synsnaedum swealh; s?na haefde
unlyfigendes eal gefeormod,
f?t ond folma.

(but he seized quickly on the first pass a sleeping warrior, he tore him
up with ease, bit his body, drank blood in streams, swallowed huge
chunks; at once he had devoured the entirety of that lifeless man, feet
and hands.3)

Now much of the ghastliness of this passage derives from the fact that
Hondscioh?Grendel's victim (1. 2076)?is notjust killed but physically
eaten; the Beowulf-poet underscores this point through the graphic
detail with which he describes the monster's gory meal. This is not a
heroic contest between champions but a lion pouncing on a helpless
deer.4 Were it not that we, the human audience, are perennially sus
ceptible to this very concrete, very creaturely terror, the scene would
not grip us as it does. The symbolic accomplishment of Beowulf the
hero is to reject the role of prey and to establish himself as Grendel's
worthy opponent. In the process, he begins to modulate aggressive

2 For an excellent study of the terror-inducing narrative techniques in this passage,

see Alain Renoir, "Point of View and Design for Terror in Beowulf" NM, 63 (1962),
154-67.
3See Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, ed. Fr. Klaeber, 3d ed. (Lexington, Mass.:
D.C. Heath, 1950), 11. 740-45. All subsequent textual citations will refer to this edition.
Translations are my own.
4 The hart, as we shall note later, figures prominently in the representation of vio
lence in Beowulf. Grendel's depredations are reminiscent of the predatorial similes by
which Homer on occasion magnifies the rampages of his heroes. For further discussion
of Homer's animal and predatorial imagery, see Emily Vermeule, Aspects of Death in
Early Greek Art and Poetry (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1979),
pp. 83-117.

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 How Heroes Perceive Monsters in Beowulf 3

violence in the poem out of the predatorial pattern of stealthy-attack

and-flight into that of formal, agonistically styled contesting.
Before focusing on the poem in detail, I need to state more fully
the differences between the predatorial and agonistic aggressive pat
terns.5 The distinction between these aggressive modes in Beowulf cau
most clearly be seen in terms of three variables: objective, style, and
interrelationship of the adversaries in terms of biological species. The
objective of pr?dation is obvious enough: hunters stalk their prey in
order to make them their food. By contrast, formal agonistic contest
ing is usually undertaken for the control of some external resource
(such as territory or mating prerogatives), or simply for the exhilara
tion of "winning." And so contest rivals need only to be beaten, not
eaten. This difference in aim engenders contrasting combat styles.
For predators, ceremonial display addressed toward prospective vic
tims would in most cases be counterproductive; their purposes are
better served by a secretive than by a well-advertised approach. Ago
nistic combatants, on the other hand, attach a great premium to such
intangibles as high dominance ranking or "honor and glory" since,
within their communities, these abstract gains are often betokened by
and translate into concrete benefits.6 For these reasons they exhibit a
penchant for elaborate battle ceremony accompanied by flamboyant
threat displays and predictable styles of combat, preferably conducted
in public arenas. Finally, the aggressive mode correlates significantly
(though not absolutely) with comembership or lack of comembership

5 Pertaining to the following differentia is my discussion of the sociobiological back

ground of agonistic contesting, Verbal Dueling in Heroic Narrative: The Homeric and Old
English Traditions (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1990), pp. 16-25. The problem of
aggression has given rise to a booming scholarly industry. Particularly relevant to the
present review are Iren?us Eibl-Eibesfeldt, The Biology of Peace and War: Men, Animals,
and Aggression, trans. Eric Mosbacher (New York: Viking, 1979), and Robert L. O'Con
nell, Of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons, and Aggression (Oxford: Oxford Univ.
Press, 1989). Walter J. Ong's Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (Ithaca:
Cornell Univ. Press, 1981) explores themes of agon?a and contest, both in animal be
havior and human cultural expression. For a major new study on the structure of the
brain and the evolutionary sources of behavior, see Paul D. MacLean, The Triune Brain
in Evolution: Role in Paleocerebral Functions (New York and London: Plenum Press, 1990),
who argues that "Such basic behavior as the struggle for power, adherence to routine,
'imitation,' obeisance to precedent, and deception" (p. 16) are centered in what Mac
Lean calls the "protoreptilian formation" or R-complex in the triune brain. Thus such
ceremonialized behavior as agonistic combat is linked with an ancient brain formation.
6On contest, play, honor, and prize winning, see Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens: A
Study of the Play-Element in Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955) as well as Ong's Fighting
for Life. Jeff Opland in Anglo-Saxon Oral Poetry: A Study of the Traditions (New Haven:
Yale Univ. Press, 1980) studies the eulogistic tradition in Old English poetry. The re
lationship between contests and eulogy is a natural one, since contests are undertaken
precisely for the winning of that praise that eulogistic discourse confers.

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4 Parks
in a species; that is, predators usually prefer victims from other spe
cies whereas agonistically styled duels generally match conspecifics.
The converse does not hold true: interspecific aggression is not always
predatorial, and violence among fellow-members of a species is fre
quently unceremonialized, as in the case of a stealthy murder. One
might, moreover, cite exceptions, such as cannibalism, or elaborate
game strategies in interspecific encounters.7 In general, nonetheless,
predators prefer to hunt creatures over whom they enjoy overwhelm
ing fighting advantages; and this state of affairs is best brought about
interspecifically. By contrast, the ceremonialization of combat flour
ishes best amid symmetrical, thus intraspecific, opposition.
There are, of course, other types of aggression besides the preda
tory and agonistic.8 Indeed, the integrity of "aggression" as a scientific
category has from time to time been questioned; and the accent of
much recent research has fallen on its physiological determinants.9
Yet behavioral differentia cannot be disregarded, particularly in liter
ary study where the subjects of investigation are, in a biological sense,
nonexistent; and in the behavioral terrain that "aggression" seems con
ventionally to designate, the distinction between high-display agon?a
and low-display pr?dation has a real heuristic value. In a recent study
Robert O'Connell (1989) has made this point, showing that the alter
nation between predatory and "intraspecific" (i.e., agonistic) patterns
has been a persisting theme in the history of weaponry and its deploy
ment. Even in animal combat, he points out, that weaponry (such as a
stag's antlers) biologically engendered for intraspecific combat is both
more spectacular and less destructive than the weaponry of pr?dation.
Human warfare, he maintains, has witnessed a tension between the
impulse toward an intraspecific ceremonialization that limits (though
it by no means eliminates) bloodshed and an increasingly impersonal

7 On evolutionary gaming strategies, see John Maynard Smith, "Games Theory and
the Evolution of Behavior," Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, series B, 205
(1979), 475?88. The fundamental principles set forth here would apply equally to
interspecific and intraspecific encounters. Nonetheless, the drastic differences in the
fighting capacities of interspecific opponents would plainly impact on their likelihood
of employing such "game strategies" as elaborate battle rituals. Cannibalism, interest
ingly enough, is indeed featured in a major Old English poem, Andreas; for a patristic
interpretation of this motif, see Robert Casteen, "Mermedonian Cannibalism and Fig
urai Narration," NM, 75 (1974), 74-78.
8K. E. Moyer differentiates between six types of aggression?predatory, intermale,
fear-induced, maternal, irritable, and sex-related in The Psychobiology of Aggression (New
York: Harper and Row, 1976).
9 For a perspicuous recent survey of the physiology of aggression, see K. E. Moyer,
Violence and Aggression: A Physiological Perspective (New York: Paragon House, 1987). On
this matter see also MacLean.

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 How Heroes Perceive Monsters in Beowulf 5

and destructive weapons technology that confers the advantage to

those who wage war predatorially, without restraint. O'Connell's book
is replete with superb examples, such as the Anglo-American naval
establishment's stubborn distrust of the invisible and subversive sub
marine.10 Completed before I became aware of O'Connell's work, my
own study of verbal dueling in heroic epic (1990) recognized a similar
distinction. For the bragging and abuse exchanged between heroes
joined in an agonistic encounter is fundamentally akin to threat dis
plays between conspecific mammals, such as the roaring matches with
which red deer preface their clashing of antlers.11 Predatorial encoun
ters do not feature such bilateral symmetrical displays to anything
approaching the same degree.
While the Beowulf poet's artistry draws upon this contrast, of course
we must recognize that neither he nor his fictional creations under
stood it through these same analytic categories. Yet a mouse trapped
by a cat, while it may never have read Konrad Lorenz or E. O. Wilson,
knows perfectly well that it has a problem; and so do the Danes. More
over, the sheer gruesomeness of the Danish catastrophe makes it plain
where the poet's sympathies lie. Modern readers critical of martial
idealism are sometimes disposed to valorize the viewpoints of Grendel
and his mother, arguing that their "monstrosity" is no worse than that
of their human foes. John Gardner's Grendel plays on something of this
sensibility.12 Yet such most emphatically is not the standpoint of the

10O'Connell, pp. 212?30. O'Connell quotes British Admiral A. K. Wilson's condem

nation of this undeniably effective tool of destruction on grounds that it was "under
handed, unfair, and damned un-English" (p. 223).
11 See T. H. Clutton-Brock, F. E. Guinness, and S. D. Albon, Red Deer: Behavior and
Ecology of Two Sexes (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 104-42. For other
fine descriptions of Stereotypie agonistic aggression, see Tinbergen's account of the
territorial clashes of herring gulls (pp. 44-96), Paul Leyhausen's narration and draw
ings of tomcat duels in Cat Behavior: The Predatory and Social Behavior of Domestic and Wild
Cats, trans. Barbara A. Tonkin, rev. ed. (New York: Garland, 1979), pp. 170-88, and
D. Caroline Blanchard and Robert J. Blanchard's analysis of the attack and defense
postures of rats, "Affect and Aggression: An Animal Model Applied to Human Behav
ior," in Advances in the Study of Aggression, 1 (1984), 1-62. Frans De W7aal in Chimpanzee
Politics: Power and Sex among Apes (New York: Harper and Row, 1982) and Jane Goodall
in The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of
Harvard Univ. Press, 1986) provide a wealth of evidence, anecdotal and analytic, on
dominance struggles and other types of aggression among chimpanzees. In many ago
nistic encounters among animals, gestures and especially vocalization?such as the
roaring in the stag rutting contests?figures prominently (see Eugene S. Morton, "The
Occurrence and Significance of Motivation-Structure Rules in Some Bird and Mammal
Sounds," American Naturalist, 111 [1977], 855?69).
12The monstrosity of heroism has become something of a critical commonplace;
Kevin Kiernan's "Grendel's Heroic Mother" (In Geardagum, 6 [1984], 13-33), f?r ex~
ample, conveys this attitude. Despite what one might infer from the title, Greenfield's

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6 Parks

Beowulf poet. His outlook is thoroughly homocentric?or, if I may

unleash the neologism "anthroscopic," whose syllable -scop-, derived
from the Greek verb skopein 'to see' puns with the Anglo-Saxon word
for "poet." Such parochialism may be easily derided by persons who
have seldom been exposed to physical violence; but when one's sur
vival is in question, decentered and dehumanized viewpoints quickly
lose their appeal. Critics who assume an impartial response to the
massacre of the Danes have not sufficiently grappled with the imagis
tic horror of those scenes. In warlike times, or in their recent memory,
mythic narratives of atrocities against human community are no joke.
Neither the Scandinavians within the action of the poem nor the poet
audience group witnessing it has any sympathy to waste on demonic
ravagers whose "lifedays" they, like Beowulf, "reckon beneficial to
none of the [human] nations" (11. 793?94). The only good predator is
a dead predator: so say the prey.
The poet's predatorial coloring of the original crisis implicitly im
putes nonhumanity to Grendel; and other strokes in his portraiture
accentuate this effect.13 He inhabits an inaccessible, underwater den
and stalks the misty moors beyond the margins of human community
outreach. Possessed of overpowering strength, he nonetheless pre
fers not to attack frontally but to 'ensnare' (besyrwan, 1. 713) through
stealthy nighttime assaults, carrying off in his gl?f (1. 2085) what he
does not devour at the time. When he enters Heorot he sees not pro
spective worthy adversaries by whom he might enhance his glory but
only the 'expectation of a plentiful meal' ("wistfylle w?n," 1. 734). Al
though it seems he could not "approach the throne" (11. 168?69),
whether God's or Hrothgar's, in all other respects Grendel exhibits
disregard if not outright disdain for the symbols and ceremonies of
human order, including even the civilities of warfare. Thus he es

"A Touch of the Monstrous in the Hero, or Beowulf Re-Marvellized" (ES, 63 [1982],
294-300) is more concerned with the hero's fantastical powers than with his violence.
Though it does not deal with Beowulf in any detail, John P. Hermann's Allegories of War:
Language and Violence in Old English Poetry (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1989)
brings contemporary theoretical perspectives to bear on problems of textual violence.
13 Many of the observations below on the nature of the monsters do not, of course,
originate with me. Since Tolkien's great essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics"
(Proceedings of the British Academy, 22 [1936], 245-95), an essay whose title may be taken
to imply, indeed, the monstrosity of critics, vast imagination and effort have been lav
ished on these enemies of mankind, and few facets of their natures and portrayals have
been unattended to. For a thoughtful review and discussion, see John D. Niles, Beowulf:
The Poem and Its Tradition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1983), pp. 3-30. In
Geardagum, 6 (1984), with essays by Paul Beekman Taylor, Kevin Kiernan, Alexandra
Hennessy Olsen, and Raymond Tripp, is devoted exclusively to the monsters.

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 How Heroes Perceive Monsters in Beowulf 7

chews formal challenge and prebattle flyting?not, we must assume,

out of fear but mere contempt. Similarly, he will not undertake the
postbattle restoration of peace through "wergild" (11. 154?58), such
as one might hope for in intertribal feuding. These implied attitudes
on Grendel's part are thoroughly predatorial: why should a cat come
to terms with mice? Further?and this is a particularly telling de
tail?human weaponry is unavailing against him. And in this connec
tion we should recall, as O'Connell points out, that the weaponry as
well as the defensive strategy that evolution has designed for intraspe
cific combat is often useless or unused against predators.14 Thus the
experience of the Danes and Geats echoes that of other prospective
prey when they discover that, against Grendel, their swords do not
bite (11. 801-5).
That Grendel and his mother are indeed predators par excellence
is underscored in one of the poem's most striking anecdotes. After
Grendel's defeat has provoked the counterattack by his mother,
Hrothgar sets about describing their lair to Beowulf. To highlight the
baneful aura surrounding Grendel's Mere which the Geat will soon
have to brave,15 Hrothgar introduces an explicitly predatorial figure
(11. 1368-72):
B?ah J)e h?e?stapa hundum geswenced,
heorot hornum trum holtwudu s?ce,
feorran geflymed, ??r h? feorh sele?,
aldor on of re, a?r h? in wille,
hafelan [beorgan]; nis J>aet h?oru st?w!
(Although the heath-stalker hard-pressed by hounds, the strong-horned
hart should seek the forest, put to flight from afar, sooner will he give
up his life on the bank than go in to save his neck [lit.: head]; that is not
a nice place!)

This passage works through an implied comparison of degree whose

constant term is predatorially inspired terror. The hart is more fright
ened by the mere possibility of the death lurking beneath the waves
than by its certitude at the teeth of the pursuing hounds. By so much,

14See O'Connell, pp. 13-29. Blanchard and Blanchard have observed that, at a
certain stage in struggles between rats, the defender rolls over to protect his back from
the bites of his assailant. The interesting point is that the defender is exposing his
stomach and genitals, which are inherently far more vulnerable to debilitating injury
than the back is; yet his assailant never bites him in these areas. Plainly such defense
strategies could not avail against a predator, who would not exercise the restraint that
rat conspecifics do.
15 For a full discussion of the poet's construction of this scene in such fashion as to
engender aesthetic and imaginative terror, see Richard Butts, "The Analogical Mere:
Landscape and Terror in Beowulf,'" ES, 68 (1987), 113-21.

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8 Parks

then, does the horror of Grendel's clan exceed that of other killers.
Further, since Hrothgar's obvious intention is to give Beowulf a frank
warning about the risks he is asking him to run, his anecdote implies
comparison between the fate of the stag and that of any man who as
sails Grendel's abode. This association is strengthened by the fact that
one of the terms in this passage for the hart, heorot (1. 1369), serves
also as the name for the Danish hall.16 That men can be food for
monsters Hrothgar knows all too well?no one better. Thus when the
moment arises for him to summon his greatest descriptive powers to
the imaginative construction of terror, it is a predatorial figure that
he calls upon.
Yet while Grendel's man-eating habits dehumanize him, in other
respects he is much akin to his human victims.17 This kinship has in
deed a literal aspect. For on two parallel occasions, immediately prior
to the first attacks of Grendel and his mother, the poet inserts ring
framed meditations (11. 99?114 and 1255?78) on the lineage of these
monsters that traces back to Cain, the original fratricide and child of
the original human parents.18 Of course, the fact that eotenas, ylfe,
orcneas, and gigantas are also descended from Cain (11. 112?13) miti

16 As Butts points out, line 1369 in this passage provides "the only occurrence of
'heorot' as a common noun in Beowulf (p. 117). In "Heorot and Dragon-Slaying in
Beowulf (Proceedings of the Patristic, Medieval and Renaissance Conference, 11 [1986],
159-75), Robert Lawrence Schichler examines the opposition between the hart and
the dragon, attested in various early Latin sources and interrelating structurally the
two main parts of the poem. Perhaps the metaphorical identification of the hart with
human community as represented by the Danish hall prepares the ground for the
decorporealization of pr?dation in the dragon episode, as discussed below. For a Freud
ian discussion of the significance of the hall in the Anglo-Saxon world, see James W.
Earl, "The Role of the Men's Hall in the Development of the Anglo-Saxon Superego,"
Psychiatry, 46 (1983), 139-60. Edward B. Irving provides a sensitive discussion of the
poetics of the hall in Beowulf in his chapter "The Hall as Image and Character," in
Rereading Beowulf (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), pp. 133-67.
17 Again, many critics have made this observation; for a particularly fine discussion,
see Edward B. Irving, A Reading of "Beowulf (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1968),
pp. 15-22. Kiernan ("Grendel's Heroic Mother") advocates more specifically for the
human heroic characteristics of Grendel's mother.
18On the use of ring-framed digressions at the beginning of each monstrous insur
gency in the poem, see my "Ring Structure and Narrative Embedding in Homer and
Beowulf' NM, 89 (1988), 127-51; Michael D. Cherniss gives close attention to ring
structure in these passages and others in '"Beowulf Was Not There': Compositional
Implications of Beowulf, Lines 1299b-1301," Oral Tradition, 4 (1989), 316-29. For
scriptural and patristic interpretations of the "great feud" and the Cain tradition in
Beowulf, see Marijane Osborn, "The Great Feud: Scriptural History and Strife in Beo
wulf,'" PMLA, 93 (1978), 973-81, and David Williams, Cain and Beowulf: A Study in
Secular Allegory (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1982). John Block Friedman in The
Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought ([Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press,
1981], pp. 87-107 and esp. 103-7) studies Cain's kin, including Grendel and his
mother, within the context of the medieval lore of monstrous races.

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 How Heroes Perceive Monsters in Beowulf 9

gates the force of this genealogical association between monsters and

men as evidence of cohumanity. Nonetheless, the hostilities between
these races are described in the language of feuding (f?h?e, 1. 109)
and resonate against an all-too-human background of intertribal war
fare.19 Moreover, Hrothgar specifically reports that the two mearcsta
pan ('border-walkers,' 1. 1348) bear human likeness: the mother has
'the likeness of a woman' ("idese onl?cnes," 1. 1351) while her son is in
'the form of a man' ("weres waestmum," 1. 1352). It is true, however,
that he is 'larger than any other man' ("m?ra ?Donne aenig man ??er,"
1. 1353), so much so that four of Beowulf's retainers are required to
carry just his head (11. 1634-39). This size difference seems to imply
the extreme unlikelihood of interbreeding between Grendel's kin and
Hrothgar's;20 and in this connection we should recall that the ability
of male and female to procreate is one of the marks of comembership
in a species. Then again, Grendel and his mother exhibit human life
habits and may have mastered certain human arts. Like humans, they
occupy a hall (albeit an underwater hall) whose approach is guarded
by a comitatus of sorts, if one wishes to view the nicors in this way; on
the other hand, the exile imagery marking the comings and goings of
the Danes' marginalized foes colors them with a contrary yet equally
humanizing stroke. Moreover, even though Grendel does not seem to
know the mastery of such 'good things' ("g?da," 1. 681) as swords, his
mother can put a dagger ("seax," 1. 1545) to use, and they own a
sword heirloom whose hilt records runically a piece of family history
(11. 1677-98), if we can assume that giants whom the flood killed are
Grendel's distant relations.21 Taylor has gone so far as to argue that
Grendel knows speech and writing, although he never displays these
skills in the poem.22 Further lexical corroboration for Grendel's inter
mittent humanity can be found in Tripp's comprehensive table of
terms for him and his kin, which indexes a mixture of associations
human, monstrous, and diabolical.23 My point, in sum, is that Grendel

19On the theme of intertribal feuding in a larger pattern of narrative interlace, see
Stanley J. Kahrl, "Feuds in Beowulf: A Tragic Necessity?" MP, 69 (1972), 189-98.
20 It is true that in ?rvar-?dds saga the protagonist manages to impregnate the giant
ess Hildigunn, much to her surprise, since she took him for a baby. This saga, however,
exhibits a marked penchant for the fantastical, which, unlike Beowulf, it seems to per
ceive as such. The possibility of sexual relations between Grendel's brood and the hu
man tribes is, in the Old English poem, a question that never arises.
21 The history of the sword and the precise contents of the hilt inscription remain,
as they have always been, vexed problems. For a recent speculation that Heremod was
the sword's original owner and that it bears his name, see Johann K?berl, "The Magic
Sword in Beowulf Neophilologus, 71 (1987), 120-28.
22Paul Beekman Taylor, "Grendel's Monstrous Arts," In Geardagum, 6 (1984), 1- 12.
23Raymond P. Tripp, "Grendel Polytropos," In Geardagum, 6 (1984), 43-69.

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i o Parks

is irreducibly ambiguous with respect to the human-nonhuman di

chotomy; and this very liminality is essential to the poet's designs. Be
cause Grendel devours Danes like so many rabbits, he casts the survi
vors into an insufferable role. Yet because he exhibits so many human
traits, he is susceptible to the radicalizing agonistic challenge of the
hero. Thus the poetic narrator and the hero collaborate in his trans
formation. To try to fix him and his mother into one category or the
other would be to deny one of the poem's most essential acts.
I would like to emphasize that the distinction this essay is exploring,
while of real bearing at certain points in the poem, is nonetheless of
limited importance; in no way does it constitute the controlling theme
around which all other elements in the poem are organized. Grendel's
nature has dimensions that the distinction cannot elucidate. For ex
ample, Norse analogues (such as Grettir s Saga) suggest his literary af
filiation with the draugr and other supernatural miscreants of legend
and saga.24 While these literary traditions may themselves feed occa
sionally on the interplay between predator and agonistic rival, they
have a full life of their own these terms cannot explain away. More
over, as Tripp's table details in full, Grendel is at times characterized
as an infernal creature?a 'fiend in hell' ("f?ond on helle," 1. 101),
'hell's captive' ("helle haefton," 1. 788), an 'alien spirit' ("ellorg?st / el
lorgaest," 11. 807, 1617, 1621), a companion of'devils' (1. 756), indeed,
a devil himself, if we accept that the reference of "d?ofla" in line 1680
includes him. Russom has gone so far as to argue that Grendel lives
in hell quite literally.25 His diabolical pedigree is reinforced by the
repeated allusions to the feud between God and Cain's progeny. This
world of Christian mythological reference and resonance implicates
far more than just the interrelations between the human and infra
human; indeed, Grendel's ambiguous predatoriality is less essential to
his representation than these other associations are. Yet there is no
need to unravel and rank these threads in his nature. Other illustrious
monsters?such as Homer's Polyphemos or the cultured yet man
eating rakshasas of the Indian epics Mah?bh?rata and R?m?yana?
show similar blends of traits predatorial, human, and superhuman or
supernatural. Each of these imparts to the resulting monstrous per
sonality its own distinctive coloring, and none is reducible to another.

24 On this and other monster lore relating to Grendel's brood, see Nora K. Chadwick,
"Norse Ghosts," Folklore, 57 (1946), 50?65 and 106-27; ner "The Monsters and Beo
wulf," in The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in Some Aspects of their History and Culture Presented to
Bruce Dickens, ed. Peter Clemoes (London: Bowes and Bowes, 1956), pp. 171 ? 203; and
Kathryn Hume, "From Saga to Romance: The Use of Monsters in Old Norse Litera
ture," SP, 77 (1980), 1-25.
25Russom details and documents this view richly in his unpublished essay, "Grendel's
Home in Hell."

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 How Heroes Perceive Monsters in Beowulf 11

The ambiguity in Grendel's representation is exploited by Beowulf,

who refuses to accept the premise of inequality that the predator-prey
relationship presupposes but insists instead on conducting his anti
monstrous campaign in the high style, as between conspecific adver
saries. It is true that most of his ceremonial display is directed toward
his human cohorts, not the monsters; yet Grendel himself must bear
much of the blame for this, since his reliance on surprise attack does
not allow for dialogue. Nonetheless, the Grendel affair lies at the
heart of Beowulf's intertribal dealings, which are notable for their
altruistic motives and honorable course. Nowhere is this more evident
than in his initial generous offer to risk his life for the benefit of a
foreign people.26 To be sure, he has a family debt to repay, incurred
when his father Ecgtheow was bailed out by Hrothgar during a diffi
cult feud with the Wylfings (11. 457-72); yet in the subsequent Danish
crisis Beowulf presents himself without being asked and renders ser
vices that far exceed his obligations. Further, he binds himself to the
Grendel venture with formal, unilateral pledges, first in his dialogue
with the Danish coast guard (11. 237-300), and later with Hrothgar
himself (11. 407-90). The culminating stage in this process arrives in
his flyting with Unferth, where the Geat's heroic credentials are called
up for inspection and wagered as the stake for victory or loss.27 This
heroic flyting is an instance of a widely diffused contest genre whose
defining characteristic is an oral contract binding one or both of the
flyters to a martial test by which the quarrel will be adjudicated. In
this case Beowulf and Unferth are the contestants, the right to claim
heroic superiority is the prize, and Beowulf's fortunes against Grendel
will measure their rival claims. The interesting point is that, since
Grendel is unavailable for challenges and cannot be flyted with, his
projected fight with Beowulf has now been woven into the structure
of a larger intraspecific (man-against-man) contest that adumbrates a
heroic ethos and conforms to a code of honor. Thus Beowulf's cam
paign against Grendel has been invested through his association with
agonistic rather than antipredatorial overtones.
Since Grendel has been so thoroughly alienated from the homocen
tric (or anthroscopic) sensibilities of the poem, Beowulf's expedient
of redirecting ceremonial display from monsters to men provides an
acceptable substitute in bringing about the symbolic transformation
that he desires. After all, the human community is trying to convince
itself that it can combat with Grendel agonistically; Grendel's opinion

26 For an excellent close reading of the initial Geat-Dane interactions, see Irving,
Reading of "Beowulf," pp. 43-81.
271 study these contractual and agonistic interactions at length in Verbal Dueling in
Heroic Narrative.

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 12 Parks

on the likelihood of their success in such a project is thoroughly un

wanted. Nonetheless, in his final boast at bedtime (11. 677-87), Beo
wulf makes him the immediate beneficiary of a sincere and coura
geous heroic gesture. Ignorant of the charm by which, evidently,
Grendel has rendered himself invulnerable to sword-blowrs (11. 804?5),
Beowulf renounces the use of weaponry on the grounds that Grendel,
despite his great strength, is unversed in these arts. For the Geat does
not consider himself inferior to his rival in war-strength (11. 677-78)
and wants to establish this in a fight where both enjoy the same ad
vantages and limitations. God will assign glory as seems right to Him
(11. 685-87); and by this allusion to external witnessing (the third
stander) and supernal judgment Beowulf is calling upon one of the ba
sic principles of the formal contest.28 In all of this Beowulf is distanc
ing himself from the ruthless pragmatism typifying the self-protective
stratagems of prey confronted with the overwhelming superior force
of predators. To the contrary, he wants a fair fight between matched
warriors; and as O'Connell points out repeatedly, the intraspecific
fighting mode features symmetrical weaponry. Of course, all of this
heroic idealism is quite lost on Grendel, one might say, since the brief
moment of their encounter leaves Cain's man-eating descendant with
no time to reflect on his opponent's gallantries. Yet again, this is quite
beside the point. For the heroic service which Beowulf means to per
form is for the benefit of the human community to whom he broad
casts these noble sentiments, not for his monstrous f?ond.
Many readers have noted the lack of dramatic tension in the actual
Beowulf-Grendel fight. For the moment that Grendel recognizes the
quality of his foe, he becomes "hinf?s" (1. 755), 'eager to escape' to
his 'hiding place' ("heolster," 1. 755) in the fens. Yet the poet tells
us explicitly that his strength is greater than his mother's (11. 1282 ?
87). Why, then does the agl ca perform so poorly in this his death
struggle? Of course, he does not enjoy the home-court advantage that
his mother does when Beowulf encounters her in her lair. Yet the
more basic reason is that he has not come prepared to contest with a
heroic equal; his reaction typifies that of a predator suddenly meeting
up against more than he has reckoned on. Despite the bench-bashing
and wall-shaking, his fight with Beowulf never emerges into the full
status of an agonistic contest.
Such is not the case with Grendel's mother, who has been alerted

28See Ong's comments on the role of the witness in contests (pp. 45-47); in Verbal
Dueling (pp. 36-39) I amplify on this point, differentiating between three kinds of epic
heroic witnesses.

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 How Heroes Perceive Monsters in Beowulf 13

by her son's misfortune to the presence of an adversary who cannot

be dispatched with the ease that his predecessors were. Nonetheless,
in keeping with the habits of her clan, she too introduces herself to
the Danes predatorially. Waiting until the revellers have gone to sleep,
she sneaks into Heorot, snatches ?schere, and escapes into the dark
ness; and that she has made a good meal of the worthy thane is to be
inferred from one of the most ghastly images of predatory violence in
the poem in the Danes' discovery of his head on the cliff beside her mere
(11. 1417-21). All the same, while her behavior is predatory, her mo
tives are not. The poet tells us specifically that she made her woeful
journey "sunu d?oS wrecan" 'to avenge the death of her son' (1. 1278);
and in his speech to Beowulf the next morning Hrothgar character
izes her assault as an act of vengeance within a feud (11. 1330?45), not
a food-foraging expedition. Moreover, Beowulf's encounter with her
proceeds much as a battle of champions. His approach is proclaimed
as a kind of challenge by the blowing of a horn (11. 1423?24) and the
shooting of a nicor (11. 1432?36); and before plunging into the waters
he arms himself in the formal heroic manner (11. 1442?54) and en
gages in a decorous exchange with Hrothgar and his former rival and
new friend, Unferth (11. 1455-91). Thus a predatorially styled initia
tive has been countered by a ceremonious, agonistic response; and in
the fight that follows, it is Beowulf's policy that prevails. For this epic
struggle is conducted not as a predatorial massacre but as a single com
bat on fairly equal terms. Both tear at each other by hand; each deals
the other an unsuccessful stroke with a blade. And here a further
symmetry emerges: for the inability of Hrunting (Unferth's sword
gift) to injure her (11. 1519?28), which recalls Grendel's invulner
ability against sword-blows (11. 801-5), is paralleled by the success of
Beowulf's corselet in turning aside her dagger-thrust (11. 1545?54).29
In the end Beowulf slaughters her with her own sword. With this act,
and with the retrieval of Grendel's head as a display and token of his
victory,30 Beowulf has finally and decisively cast off the image of preda
tory victim with which the human community has been straddled
from the outset of the poem. And in the process he has vindicated
agonistic heroism as a means of dealing with such problems.
Readers have often noted that the dragon in Beowulf is quite dis

29On the significance of the byrnie as defensive armament in the poem, see Daniel
McGuiness, "Beowulf's Byrnies," ELN, 26 (1989), 1-3.
30 The taking of the head as trophy is reminiscent of the stripping of armor after
battle, a standard motif of the Homeric contest, as I argue in Verbal Dueling. See also
Charles Segal's The Theme of the Mutilation of the Corpse in the Iliad (Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1971).

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 14 Parks
similar from his monstrous foregoers,31 and this observation certainly
holds regarding the issue under study here. In fact, the dragon is
neither so predatorial nor so human as Grendel is. True, he destroys
Geatland with ruthless violence and evident contempt for the oppo
sition. Yet he never actually eats anyone, at least that we hear of; and
even if one wishes to argue that the poet simply omitted to mention
this detail, the omission is itself significant. Gone from this portion of
the poem are gory images of a monster tearing limbs from a helpless
man, slurping blood, and gulping hunks of flesh. The terror, though
no less real, is less corporeal. Yet while he is not a predator, the
dragon does not project the image of a champion or conspecific ad
versary either. He does fit into certain human stereotypes?that of the
guardian (weard and hyrde), the hall-dweller, the miserly and vengeful
king. Yet he lacks a comitatus, does not appear to enjoy active mem
bership in a tribe or clan, and boasts no genealogy. Further, he is
serpentine, and thus conspicuously nonanthropomorphic, in physical
appearance. This is a monster truly alien to human kind. The contrast
between predator and conspecific adversary simply does not compre
hend him. And since he does not inhabit the margins between these
categories, he cannot be transformed through the same process.
Beowulf's response to his challenge nonetheless incorporates many
agonistic movements; the Geat's heroism is indeed founded on ago
nistic paradigms to such a degree that he cannot eschew them en
tirely. Thus he prefaces his assault with formal boasts before his re
tainers and apologizers for the necessity of armor (11. 2510?37); soon
after, he broadcasts his arrival at the dragon's barrow with a shout of
challenge (11. 2550-53), not unlike flyting, that succeeds indeed in
arousing the ire of the wyrm. Yet his realistic recognition of the need
for sword and shield and byrnie, in view of the anticipated battle-fire
and poison (11. 2522 ? 24), shows that certain agonistic proprieties have
had to cede place to expediency. The dragon's menace is simply too
overwhelming to permit overscrupulousness regarding the niceties of

31 See, for example, Niles's comments on this point (pp. 23-28). Several valuable
studies of the Beowulf dragon and dragon lore generally include William Witherlee
Lawrence, "The Dragon and his Lair in Beowulf' PMLA, 26 (1918), 547-83; Arthur E.
DuBois, "The Dragon in Beowulf" PMLA, 72 (1957), 819-22; Kenneth Sisam, "Beo
wulf's Fight with the Dragon," RES, n.s. 9 (1958), 129-40; Alan K. Brown, "The Fire
drake in Beowulf" Neophilologus, 64 (1980), 439-60; Jonathan D. Evans, "Semiotics and
Traditional Lore: The Medieval Dragon Tradition," Journal of Folklore Research, 22
(1985), 85-112; and Schichler ("Heorot and Dragon-Slaying in Beowulf). Raymond
Tripp in More about the Fight with the Dragon: Beowulf 2208b?3182, Commentary, Edition,
and Translation (New York: Univ. Press of America, 1983) provides an exhaustive close
reading of the dragon sequence.

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 How Heroes Perceive Monsters in Beowulf 15

formal dueling. The battle that follows, while certainly a supreme

contest in a sense, is characterized more by an asymmetrical parity
than by a genuine matching up according to a single system of rules.
Fire clashes against shield, fang against corselet, sword against bone,
advance by foot against an uncoiling and slithering: Beowulf and the
dragon do not share a single common term in weaponry or styles of
attack and defense. Finally and perhaps most tellingly, Beowulf can
not, despite his boast, defeat his opponent single-handed; the dragon
dies only when Beowulf and Wiglaf team up. In short Beowulf, de
spite his heroic preferences, has had to yield to necessity. The dragon
simply must be killed, whatever the means; and while the spirit of
agonistic adventurism has not been quenched altogether, cooperation
between fellow warriors has emerged into greater prominence.
Thus agonistic heroism no longer stands in antithesis to pr?dation.
This dichotomy, so crucial to the Grendel sequence, has faded en
tirely out of view. At the same time I would like to suggest that the
vacuum created by the disappearance of this concern is filled by an
other newly emerging problem that exhibits a certain metaphoric
likeness on the level of human community to the threat that pr?dation
posed on the level of individual corporeal existence. From its outset
the story has been played out against a background of intertribal
friendships and feuds. In the last thousand lines, however, the fre
quency and duration of these digressions increases markedly.32 To my
reading, some of the most horrific imagery unfolds in these passages,
as when the terrible Swedish king Ongentheow drives the wound
weary Geats into Ravensw7ood and serenades them the night long with
threats to hack them open with swords and leave them swinging from
gallows-trees for the sport of birds (11. 2936-42). What the Geatish
messenger who recollects this episode from tribal history wishes to
convey is that, with the dissemination of the bad news of Beowulf's
death and the cowardice of his retainers, bloody assaults like this are
only what the Geats have to expect. In a figurative sense, then, the
Swedes and other enemies are threatening to dismember the Geatish
nation and "consume its substance," as it were. We would be wise not
to press this analogy too far. No one ever implies that the Swedes or
Franks practice cannibalism or genocide; nor can we gloss over the dis
tinction between the graphically concrete violence of Dane-gobbling
and the more abstract violence in the "rending of a community." The

32 For an interpretation of the delaying effect of these digressions, see Linda Geor
gianna, "King Hrethel's Sorrow and the Limits of Heroic Action in Beowulf;' Speculum,
62 (1987), 829-50.

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 16 Parks

former inspires terror of a stark, bodily variety, the latter, a somewhat

intangible mood of oppression and sense of impending doom. None
theless, the relationship between the devouring of persons and of
tribes is sufficient to ensure that the disappearance of corporeal pr?
dation from the poem's surface texture does not cause a loss of mo
mentum and let-down in dramatic power.
The burden of this argument is not to promote the positivistic re
duction of Beowulf into some kind of Darwinian allegory. The poem
stands as a mighty expression of the human spirit; and its sweep and
majesty are in no sense curtailed by its willingness to engage terrors
of the most creaturely sort. Indeed, these fears occasion much of the
supreme heroism in the poem and thus make possible the vindication
of human courage in the face of a hostile world.

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