Beowulf essay
In the movie
Beowulf there were a lot of differences compared to the story. Some of the
differences were Grendel came while the Geats were still awake, Grendel’s
mother turned into a young beautiful looking woman and not some big ugly
looking monster. In the film Beowulf didn't really kill Grendel’s mother.
The novel tried
to make it seem like Grendel just killed people and destroyed things just for
the fun of it. In contrast in the film Grendel was acting crazy and killing
people because his ear drum was on the outside of his ear, so any little noise
would irritate him and make him mad ready to kill. In the book they left out a
lot of details that the film did not. The film showed Grendel really had come
while the Geats were still awake because of all the noise they were making from
their celebration. When in the book they said he came when the Geats were
asleep and because he couldn't interact with humans.
Grendel’s mother
was not necessarily a monster she was immortal from what I interpreted from the
film, she could never die, and she looked just like a human being. I thought it
was interesting to see Grendel’s mother turn into almost anything she wanted to
especially a young, sexy, seductive woman, because in the story they made her
to be an ugly, strong monster that stayed at the bottom of a lake. I like the
way she used her seductive body, looks, and her stinging sassy, false promises
to seduce the naive kings to get what she wanted. She promised the kings, Heroes,
that she would make them immortal. She told them that would live on forever.
While she was lowering them in to sleep with her or even kiss her she was
secretly create a curse or monster that had something to do with whoever her
male victim was at the time. Grendel’s mother never really had a name we just
knew her to be the mother of a curse that no one could kill except Beowulf.
Beowulf came to
Denmark to kill the monster they called Grendel not knowing that it was a curse
that came behind Grendel. Beowulf successfully achieved his goal and killed
Grendel finding out that he had to kill the mother as well. Beowulf being the
epic hero he was went to the layer they lived in thinking that it was going to
be a piece of cake he himself got lowered in by the seductive mother. In the
film Beowulf didn’t really kill the mother he slept with her, that was the
biggest mistake he could have made. King Hrothgar knew
what he was setting Beowulf up for because he went through the same thing. I
feel like Hrothgar was trying to set Beowulf up for failure knowing that he was
not going to be able to defeat every curse and monster the mother created to
come his way. In the text Beowulf killed the mother and years later a dragon
came both in the movie and the film Beowulf defeated the dragon and lost his
life a little after. In the film Beowulf made Wiglaf who was his right hand man
king. If Wiglaf then became king and hopefully he wouldn't make the same
mistakes the two previous kings made.
There are a lot
of differences in the film compared to the story if I was able to I would go on
for days about the differences between the two. The ones that stood out the
most to me was Grendel come and killed almost all the Geats while they were
celebrating, Grendel’s mother was a sexy young woman who got what she wanted,
Beowulf didn't really kill Grendel’s mother, who then became the mother of his
first child in a crazy evil mistress’s way.
