Until the Dragon Comes

The unknown scop who wrote Beowulf sang of heroes, calling his hearers to the heroic life, but holding out no false hopes. All must go down in defeat at last: Wyrd will have its way. And though no man can win his final battle with metaphysical death itself, Beowulf shows us how to transcend the human condition by the willing battle with our own worst fears. Personified in three monstrous enemies, Beowulf faces physical, moral, and metaphysical Evil.

Grendel, a descendant of Cain, personifies an especially frightening image of physical Evil. Living "in a hell not hell but earth," he is never actually described, thus becoming the unknown, the thing in the dark all men fear (ll. 103-4). Grendel is the worst of two natures, half human, half beast, a lonely misfit, vicious and vengeful, cruel and cannibalistic. Moral choice has no bearing; the threat is a purely physical one; a man must fight Grendel in self-defense. Evil is omnipresent, stalking men, "invisibly following them from the edge of the marsh, always there, unseen" (ll. 161-2). Evil is also insatiable, and for Grendel "no crime could ever be enough" (l. 136). As the embodiment of Good, Beowulf must fight the Evil that seeks him out, one-on-one, armed with only his bare hands. He defeats Grendel by simply holding on, by standing firm. It is Grendel who pulls away from Beowulf's mighty embrace and thus destroys himself.

But Evil is never permanently defeated. Grendel's mother, attacking Heorot the next night, personifies a moral Evil. Wergeld and the Mosaic code of "an eye for an eye" represent human concepts of moral vengeance, and she behaves honorably by these standards. Taking only one victim, she flees the hall "to save her life" (l. 1292). In a perverse parody of the first battle, Beowulf now pursues her, bursting into her home, and she welcomes him in an embrace (l. 1501). Beowulf doubts his capacities and his men almost give up on him. Beowulf must turn to the monster's own weapon, a magic sword which...