Correction of the class test: dictation of the teacher

Beowulf and Grendel are the protagonists of the scene which is the object of analysis of the present extract. Apparently they seem to be given the same level of importance, but that’s not true. You can see that/it even from the number of lines devoted to Grendel: the narrator is carefully showing the listener all of the monster’s attitudes, motions and behaviours. The language used to have the audience follow the trade of the story resorts to different stylistic choices. The first of one is the use of an inversion in the ordinary word order. The intention is to put the word “creature” into a central focus so that the listener may well understand the real protagonist of the narration.

Creature is an interesting semantic choice that is apparently contradictory with Grendel’s monstrous nature. The effect is paradoxically to involve a certain affection in the listener/reader, indeed existence of which narrative poetry is a narrative projection, does not simply consist of good but for good to be recognised it must be set against evil. This explains for the narrator to drove the attention mainly on the monster. The qualities or features the narrator focuses the attention on are the typical ones of the predator: the first element the listener comes across in the scene is Grendel’s ability in having immediate reflex underlined and highlighted by the alliterative sound “s” in “struck and started”. In addition, it must be said that alliteration is a condition sine qua non for the survivor and life of Anglo-Saxon epic poetry: the mean through which it can be ended down orally. It goes without saying that alliteration binds words together allowing the scope the composer to remember it.

Grendel’s lack of hesitation is visible and perceptible neither even from the word order that puts “nor” together with keep in waiting. The idea of the immediate/instinctive voracity is suggested by line three where short verbs are used to convey the idea of Grendel’s speedy attack. Not only is the nature of a monster predator suggested on the national level, it is also recreated on the sound level.

Alliteration is insisted along the whole extract to reinforce the idea of a fearful creature that has no pity because he acts on an instinctive principle which is the one of selvage animals. You can see it clearly at line 741 where ones more alliteration recreates the greedy action of the monster whose pleasure and fullness depend on the slaughter of the pray. Blood and bone are symbolically juxtaposed to visually suggest the result of a human being reduced to pieces. Punctuation plays a relevant function too in suggesting the typical motion of a predator’s attack reinforced by the labial sound of “b” that implies short brakes in the telling. The result is dramatic and significantly you can see it at line 743 where the difference in the line length underlines “utterly lifeless”. Again alliteration of the liquid sound “l” and elliptical sentences bring to surface all the results of Grendel’s violence. Synecdoche of “hand and foot” makes almost visible the result of Grendel’s energy and voracity.