Part III

Catarina Sousa
Part III
Our states of mind can be influenced by everything and anything since birth. We have our own morals that we picked up from our families, we are taught to obey a certain religion, to enjoy cultural foods and to root for the same teams. But, what happens when someone tries to challenge all we’ve learned so far? You end up with a character named Grendel. Grendel is forced to act as a monster, because that is what is expected. Grendel is not intelligent enough to understand decision-making; he has a mind and imagination of an eighty year old, questioning life and even himself. Looking at religion if it’s the only way out of Hell, but realizing that none of it is true anyway, this making his existentialist views grow fonder.
As Grendel kills at the Herot Hall, the men are convinced it is just laughs and games for him. But, it seems that Grendel does this just to get some of the burden off of his own shoulders, possibly to think clearly about what death really is. He possibly was hoping that what he had done later on would follow him, as karma. The outside world was more of a gateway to thinking differently for him. He questioned many things but at the end his inner soul and heart got the best of him, and what he was “taught” to do, killed him. Although he did not physically throw himself off the cliff, I view this as a suicide but also a rebirth of his soul.
Grendel isn’t a monster anymore nor does he have to act a certain way because of his disadvantaged looks. He doesn’t have to be something he refused to be in the first place. This was him killing himself, his soul, and heart, his thoughts were too over-bearing to contain and what he has done could no longer be controlled. We were never taught to kill ourselves; it isn’t a moral thing to do. But, it was the only thing Grendel had the will-power to do without later in life being judged for.