On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears

by Asma, Stephen T.

  Both Christians and Muslims had deep-seated monster narratives to explain the evil and the uncivilized. The looming threat of their revolution opened the door for numerous hero narratives, tales that defined human virtues.

  7

  The Monster Killer

  No man can follow where God’s enemies glide through the fog.

  BEOWULF

  ONE OF THE GREAT MONSTER KILLERS of all time is the Scandinavian hero Beowulf. He comes to us in the form of an Old English manuscript called the Nowell Codex by archivists but titled Beowulf after its main character, which is bundled together with other famous texts, including Liber Monstrorum (Book of Monsters) and Alexander’s Letter to Aristotle. Most scholars put the date of this particular manuscript copy around 1100, but the story probably had existed in oral form for centuries before. The text and the tale are considered British national treasures, despite the fact that the story is about a Scandinavian hero fighting monsters in Denmark.

  “I HAVE KNOWN MUCH PERIL”

  Beowulf is the name of a young warrior from the land of the Geats in southern Sweden, and his story unfolds sometime around the late fifth and early sixth centuries. He hears of a troubled Danish king, Hrothgar, whose subjects and feasting hall (Heorot) are being menaced by a monster named Grendel. Beowulf offers his services as a monster killer: “I have known much peril, grim death dangers. Grendel’s ravages came to my ears in my own homeland.”1

  Beowulf and his band of Geat warriors are welcomed with open arms and a feast by the Danes. A mischievous Dane, named Unferth, calls Beowulf’s ability into question by reporting a story of Beowulf’s loss in a swimming competition with his friend Breca. Beowulf sets Unferth straight and establishes his monster-killing credentials, explaining that he and Breca swam side by side for five nights until an “angry sea-flood broke out above us—blackening sky and freezing northwinds forced us apart, towering salt-swells struck between us. Strange sea creatures surfaced around me….To the deep sea-floor, something pulled me—hard gripfingers hauled me to sand with grappling tight claws. It was granted to me to reach this devil, rush him to sleep with sharp sword-point—swift blade-slashing, strong in my hand, haled him deathward.” Beowulf was then attacked by several more sea monsters, all of whom he “sent to hell.” So, Beowulf concludes, Breca may have won a simple swimming contest, but he never fought and triumphed over heinous demons of the deep.

  The Grendel monster from Robert Zemeckis’s 2007 film version of Beowulf (Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros.). Image courtesy of Photofest.

  We can already see that this is a man’s story, told by men, about men, and celebrating manly virtues. Even before the encounter with Grendel we have heroes in chain mail, emptying mugs of beer, and trading stories of violent victories against formidable enemies. The testosterone level only builds as the story progresses.

  The monster Grendel, who regularly breaks into the large feasting hall at night to kill and eat the sleeping Danes, is probably the most famous monster descendant of the biblical Cain. He is described as the “kin of Cain,” underscoring the medieval tendency to tether monsters to an already established hereditary line of evil.2 Grendel, like his banished biblical ancestor, lives outside the region of normal society, like a phantom that seems to materialize only in the black of night. He lives in the “cloud misted moors” and “no man can follow where God’s enemies glide through the fog.”

  As night falls, Beowulf and his Geat warriors prepare to ambush the monster by lying quietly in the feasting hall. “Not one believed they would leave Heorot (the hall), take ship once more, seek out their homeland, the known meadows of their native country. Too many stories of that tall wine-hall, emptied of Danes by dark night slaughter, had found their ears.” In the quiet black of night, Grendel, “craving a blood feast,” suddenly bursts into the hall, ripping the iron doors off its hinges with ease. The beast snares a victim immediately; he “tore frantically, crunched bonelockings, crammed blood-morsels, gulped him with glee.” When the beast grabs his second victim, the victim grabs back. The monster is astonished to feel Beowulf’s awesome grip upon him. Beowulf’s iron fingers pin the beast and prevent any escape. A horrible battle ensues, but Beowulf doesn’t let go. It was long established that swords had no effect upon the scaly fiend, but no one was prepared, least of all Grendel, for Beowulf’s mortal grip. “Then that giant ravager—rejected by God, marked with murder, measured by his sins—finally conceived in his fiend’s mindthoughts that his loathsome body would bear no more.” As the monster pulls away in anguish, Beowulf, still refusing to let go, rips off its arm. The defeated monster, “a great death-wound gap[ing] in his shoulder,” runs back into the darkness.

  The following night Beowulf is presented with many precious gifts in gratitude and the whole hall rings out with drunken celebration. But it turns out that even monsters love their children, and waiting for that night, “slouched through the shadows, searching for revenge—grim murder-fiend Grendel’s hell-mother…mourned for her child. She was damned to hide in a dark water home, cold wildwood stream, since Cain murdered his only brother-kin, beat down to earth his father’s son-child. He was sent for that, marked with murder, from man’s company—banished to wasteland. Then woke from his loins misbegotten monsters.” Grendel’s mother turns out to be an even more dreadful foe, and Beowulf must fight her in the hall and then follow her to her watery lair. In an underwater cave Beowulf tries to crush the “sea hag,” but she is too strong. Finding a huge sword in the monster’s cache, he manages finally, “with rage in his heart,” to slay the creature. Waiting anxiously above water, the Danes and Geats watch “a welling of blood, waves of death gore, rise to the surface.” Beowulf emerges victorious, carrying the hilt of the successful sword; the sword itself has melted from the monster’s vitriolic blood.

  After much celebration Beowulf returns home and eventually becomes the king of the Geats, living happily for many years as a noble ruler. But after fifty years the peaceful interval is broken and Beowulf must rise again to meet a monstrous enemy. A wandering fugitive incurs the wrath of a horrible dragon when he steals a golden cup from the creature’s hidden treasure. The dragon takes his vengeance on all men, “spewing flame-murder, blistering mead halls—mountains of hate-fire moved through the land, he would leave no creature alive on the earth, lone night-flyer.” After the serpent blasts and sears the land of the Geats, Beowulf “called for a shield.” His warriors abandon him out of fear, but a young relative named Wiglaf stays to fight alongside the aging hero. Together the two manage to defeat the giant serpent after a difficult battle, but not before Beowulf is bitten badly by the venomous dragon. “Murderous poison welled within his breast, baleful serpent gall pushed toward his heart. The proud one wandered slowly by the wall—sat by the barrow-stone, lost in life-thoughts.” Beowulf finally dies, is cremated, and is buried on a cliff overlooking the ocean.

  TOLKIEN’S TRAGIC BEOWULF

  I’ve just committed the mortal sin, according to J. R. R. Tolkien, of summarizing the plot of Beowulf. In his influential 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” Tolkien argued that critics had failed to see the seriousness and the depth of Beowulf because they frequently abstracted the simple plot from the actual poem. There seems to be some truth in this. If I say, for example, “Beowulf is about this guy who fights three monsters and then dies,” I’ve pretty much covered the plot. Thinking about the poem in this way led many scholars to see it as a historically important linguistic artifact, but otherwise dumb and unsophisticated. It’s just a monster fight, after all.

  Tolkien showed us that the actual poetry of Beowulf was indeed powerful stuff, haunting and eerie on a line-by-line basis and emotionally edifying when taken as a whole narrative. In a passage that unknowingly augurs his own importance as an inspiring writer of monster fantasies, Tolkien defended Beowulf and its “low” monsters: “The dragon in legend is a potent creation of men’s imagination…. Even today (despite the critics) you may find me
n not ignorant of tragic legend and history, who have heard of heroes and indeed seen them, who yet have been caught by the fascination of the worm. More than one poem in recent years…has been inspired by the dragon of Beowulf.”3 Tolkien said this just one year before he published The Hobbit and began his own cottage industry of thrilling tales.

  More than just a champion of the fantasy horror genre, Tolkien weighed in on the substantive debate as to whether the poem was a work of Christian or pagan imagination. The poem is ambivalent about its hero, making him an inspirational figure, but also tragic. His strength and reliability make him a champion, but his pride and conceit make him flawed. Moreover, the poem mixes pagan tropes (e.g., the culture of fame and honor is celebrated, and Beowulf is cremated like a pagan) with Christian tropes (e.g., monotheism is sometimes intoned, and Cain is referred to explicitly). Traditionally, scholars read this ambivalence as a sign that the poem itself was a mongrel offspring, written by a northern pagan steeped in Norse legend, but copied and interpolated by a Christian monk who baptized the text with minor Christian additions. Many scholars still claim that this pastiche theory is the most coherent explanation of Beowulf’s ambiguities.4

  Even if Beowulf is a pastiche of Christian revisionism mixed with Norse paganism, it’s important to locate the precise nature of the amendments. One change, arguably, is the metaphysical status of the monsters themselves. Recall that Odysseus fights the frightening Cyclops Polyphemus, eventually blinding him and escaping his cave strapped to the belly of a sheep. In his lecture Tolkien quoted the following passage by the Beowulf scholar Raymond Wilson Chambers:

  Odysseus is struggling with a monstrous and wicked foe, but he is not exactly thought of as struggling with the powers of darkness. Polyphemus, by devouring his guests, acts in a way that is hateful to Zeus and the other gods: yet the Cyclops is himself god-begotten and under divine protection, and the fact that Odysseus has maimed him is a wrong which Poseidon [Polyphemus’s father] is slow to forgive. But the gigantic foes whom Beowulf has to meet are identified as the foes of God.5

  Like so many other monster scenarios we’ve examined so far, this point underscores the challenges of coordinating God and evil. In a monotheistic tradition such as Christianity, it’s hard to imagine anything, monster or otherwise, that isn’t technically “god-begotten.” But Chambers expresses a popular folk belief, as alive today as it was when Beowulf was copied: that God has enemies. One could retort by remembering Grendel’s hereditary connection to Cain, thereby bringing him back under the umbrella of God’s creation. But there is a more helpful reading: the relationship between heroes, monsters, and gods can be said to experience a sea change in Beowulf if we realize that the important pagan virtue of pride is the principal vice of Christianity.

  Monsters, in both pagan and biblical traditions, have been symbols of hubris; the giants are prime examples. But monster killers and heroes have been celebrated in pagan culture as the strong men of action that are needed to save the family or tribe or village. With some exceptions, such as the famous monster killer Ripley in the film Alien, who repeatedly dispatches aliens to hell, most monster killers of the Western tradition are men. Monsters give men an excuse to do the things they were built, by nature and nurture, to do: fight, protect, take, and defend. Men are those useful brutes. Hero pride was a favored impulse in the pre-Christian era, even if it came with flaws of excess and immoderation. But the biblical tradition brought a new ethic: “Blessed are the meek.” One could argue, in fact, that the main theme of the Old Testament is submission to Yahweh, and the New Testament resounds with the call to humbleness. The hero of Christianity, Jesus, even ends in the ignoble position of suffering on a cross.6 This is not exactly fertile cultural ground for growing manly monster killers. Norse he-men of Beowulf’s era would not have understood this new kind of “victory through humility.”

  Indeed, a new kind of hero was invented in Christianity. Christian heroes suffer, as do heroes of the ancient world, but unlike the ancients the Christians’ suffering is their heroism. Victory no longer comes when the hero is standing over the slain monster; it comes in the next life, after one has lived humbly and proven oneself by accommodating large amounts of unjust suffering. Traditional heroes such as Beowulf, Hercules, and Odysseus can be acknowledged for their strength and ability, but their prideful humanism, their attempts to personally bring justice to the world, must be devalued in the new Christian paradigm. According to the Judeo-Christian tradition, we don’t need monster killers when we trust in the Lord. After all, God, not man, punishes the wicked. Heroic faith replaces heroic action.

  One of the most impressive aspects of the character of Beowulf is his embodiment of what Tolkien calls “Northern courage.” Beowulf embodies a “theory of courage” that puts the “unyielding will” at the center of heroic narrative. The Norse imagination, filled with the philosophy of absolute resistance, was properly tamed in England, according to Tolkien, by contact with Christianity. The Viking commitment to “martial heroism as its own end” is unmasked by Christianity as mere hopeless nihilism, something to be overcome and remedied. Tolkien says that the poet of Beowulf saw clearly that “the wages of heroism is death.” The Christian looks back over the course of pagan history and finds that all the glory won by heroes and kings and warriors is for naught, because it is only of this earthly temporal world.

  Without Christianity, monster killers are either hopeless existential heroes, trying by pathetic human effort to rid the world of evil, or they are themselves monstrous giants amid a flock of righteous and meek devotees. Hercules, for example, is judged by medieval Christians as an abomination to be dethroned from his traditional place of adulation. The medievalist Andy Orchard quotes Aelfric’s tenth-century Lives of the Saints, which asks, “What holiness was in that hateful Hercules, the huge giant, who slaughtered all his neighbors, and burned himself alive in the fire, after he had killed men, and the lion, and the great serpent?”7

  Alexander the Great’s ancient heroism was also reconfigured in the medieval era. He courageously kills monsters in the Alexander Romance but is also regularly humbled by wise sages who point out his prideful ambition. In the medieval story of Alexander’s Journey to Paradise he is given a Judeo-Christian lesson in humility. After being surprised by a small mystical jewel that outweighs hundreds of gold coins, he is told by “a very aged Jew named Papas” that the jewel is a supernatural gift. The disembodied spirits who are waiting for Judgment Day (when they will get their bodies back) have offered this jewel to Alexander. Papas tells Alexander, “These spirits, who are enthusiastic for human salvation, sent you this stone as a memento of your blessed fortune, both to protect you and to constrain the inordinate and inappropriate urgings of your ambition.” “You are oppressed,” he continues, “with want, nothing is enough for you.” After more criticism of his vaulting ambition, Alexander is converted to meekness and charity: “At once he put an end to his own desires and ambitions and made room for the exercise of generosity and noble behavior.”8 The new nobility is quite different from the old pagan nobility.

  Beowulf is both the last gasp of pagan hero culture and an important breath in the rise of the Judeo-Christian humility culture. The truly Christian monster, the one that has completed the arc that Beowulf only initiates, will not really be a monster at all, but only a confused soul who needs a hug rather than a sword thrust. True Christianity seeks to embrace the outcast, not fight him. Christianity celebrates the downtrodden, the loser, the misshapen. Grendel is an outcast, and tender hearts have argued that the people who cast him out are the real monsters. According to this charity paradigm, the monster is simply misunderstood rather than evil. Perhaps God has created the monsters in order to teach us to love the ugly, the repulsive, the outcast.

  This has become the preferred reading, for example, of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and this ethical posture can be seen in some recent adaptations of Beowulf as well. For example, Sturla Gunnarsson’s 2005 film Beowulf and Gr
endel gives us a Grendel who is actually just a sad outcast, someone Beowulf even pities at one point. The blame for Grendel’s violence is shifted to the humans, who sinned against him earlier and brought the vengeance upon themselves. Or consider Robert Zemeckis’s 2007 Paramount Pictures version of Beowulf, featuring the voices and computergenerated images of Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, Angelina Jolie, Crispin Glover, and Ray Winstone as Beowulf. Zemeckis’s film follows Gunnarsson’s 2005 version in casting Grendel as the sad, misunderstood outcast rather than the evil monster we find in the original. In the film, Grendel is even visually altered after his injury (with CGI effects) to look like an innocent, albeit scaly, little child. In the original Beowulf the monsters are outcasts because they’re bad, just as Cain, their progenitor, was an outcast because he killed his brother, but in the new liberal Beowulf the monsters are bad because they’re outcasts. And while the monsters are being humanized in the new versions, the hero is being dehumanized. When Zemeckis’s Beowulf asks Grendel’s mother, “What do you know of me?” she replies, “I know that underneath your glamour, you’re as much a monster as my son Grendel.” The only real monsters, in this now dominant tradition, are pride and prejudice. In the original story Beowulf is a hero. In the 2007 film he’s basically a jerk, whose most sympathetic moment is when he finally realizes that he’s a jerk. It’s hard to imagine a more complete reversal of values.