Referencing of Christian Thoughts in Beowulf

Grendel:

Grendel the monster is evil because in our point of view killing a person and bringing pain and discord to those that stand for justice is wrong. His continuous thirst for blood leads to many deaths. The fact that God rejects his being from the start shows that to Christians he is not good. Evil, as seen during this time period, was mainly rooted to opposition to God.

By placing Grendel in a position against God one sees that in accordance with the times back then Grendel meets all the requirements to be categorized as “Evil”. But to Grendel he himself is not evil since from the beginning he has been forsaken. Thus he in turn carries out his soul mission: Oppose those that stand for Gods justice. It is unfortunate that he is subject to this situation but this is what also makes him different from Unferth since he was born into it.

Unferth:

Unferth is viewed as evil because he betrayed his kin and killed them. This makes him evil because this takes him down to Grendels level. By killing his kin he repeats the whole Caine and Abel scenario. This sin against God and kin is taken seriously because family is a common thing to identify with. This quite possibly sinks Unferth lower than Grendel.

The reason, Unferth chose to kill where Grendel was born into his role and had no say. Thus one sees that Unferth is a sort of mirror to that of Grendel in the sense that both did an action opposing God. One was indirectly affected by the action where the other committed the action.

Note: Reference to the story of Beowulf where Grendel is a monster that Beowulf must fight and Unferth is a rival jealous of Beowulf. Unferth actually was willing to kill his family in order to get ahead.