Authors and After Words

The epic of Beowulf falls into two parts. The first tells how Beowulf came to rid king Hrothgar’s realm of the monster Grendel and how Beowulf went on to rid the kingdom of Grendel’s even more monstrous mother. The second part tells how Beowulf returns home, rules well and wisely for 50 years, then defends his kingdom from a dragon – both he and the dragon dying in the process. What does it all mean?

Beowulf is a legend; a mytho-poeic fantasy that may or may not have roots in history, but is most pertinent in its symbolism. Monsters represent chaos though sometimes they may represent chaos redeemed, as do unicorns and winged horses. But Grendel, a creature caught between human and animal, clearly embodies chaos unredeemed. His mother, even worse than he, presents Beowulf with an even deeper chaos. Why two such confrontations? One could read the Grendel episode as the hero subduing the chaotic elements of his own youthful personality. When he faces Grendel’s mother he is defeating the chaotic elements of the social inheritance, such as the drive towards blood feuds and tribal revenge.

And the dragon? In Western European culture, dragons are a hybrid form combining the worst of many animal types. As such, dragons also represent chaos. But why should such chaos reappear so late in the hero’s life? It is my contention that this monster represents another double threat. The first threat is the final battle of all self-conscious humans, i.e. that of the hero confronting his own death. Once he has met that monster and subdued it, Beowulf is free to pass through the last known threshold of this life into the great mysterious beyond. Having done so, however, he leaves his tribe without his leadership and that is the second threat – the loss of the hero to shape the future of the tribe. In effect, the hero embodies the fate of the tribe. He is their leader, their protector, the guardian of their future. Where will they go from here? In the Beowulf legend, the hero leaves them with the dragon’s treasure horde, a prosperity at least for the time being. He also leaves them with the pattern of his life upon which others can build.

The ultimate "meaning" of the Beowulf saga is the classic personal/social archetypical process that begins with the preparation of the hero and the subsequent dedication of the heroic life to the work, the wealth, and the wisdom which will stabilize and sustain the clan, even, if possible, beyond the hero’s death.

As with most ancient stories, the authorship of Beowulf remains a mystery. In all likelihood, it may well be a collective authorship, culled from years and years of bardic performance to finally be transcribed by monks for the remainder of time. And in our time, a cracking good story is bound to find its way into film and a film needs a script. That task fell to Roger Avary who was later joined in the writing by Neil Gaiman. In his first version of the script, Avary was driven to answer a number of questions.

In the original, every indication concerning Grendel’s mother is that she is at least as monstrous as her son, if not more so. She is referred to as a troll and a hag and her fight with Beowulf is described as bloody, brutal, and long. Avary, however, was concerned to answer his initial questions but also to solve the cumbersome structure of the epic, its two halves separated by 50 years of peace and tranquility. Gaiman came up with the solution. As quoted by Avary, Gaiman said, “Roger, don’t you see? If Grendel is Hrothgar’s son, the dragon surely must be Beowulf’s son – come back to haunt him.” (See Beowulf; the Script Book, p. 10.) Ultimately, this solution brought Angelina Jolie into the film as – you guessed it – Grendel’s mother! Her means of undermining the heroic intentions of mere men? Duh!

Introducing sex guilt as the tragic flaw of the hero is not all that original, but it certainly takes this version of Beowulf down quite a contemporary path. The plot is now internalized and the action swathed in personal guilt and social despair. The fall of the hero through seduction has maimed both Hrothgar and Beowulf. The final battle of this version between the fallen father and his illegitimate (dragon) son reshapes the arc of the epic into a neo-Freudian confrontation of mutual annihilation with merely implied though troubling significance for the tribe. This moral failure ought to end with Beowulf but it doesn’t. At Beowulf’s funeral. Wiglaf, Beowulf’s good-old-boy side-kick, who has just inherited the kingship from his life-long friend, looks up to see:

Well, whaddya gonna do? Angelina Jolie probably got a fair chunk of change for allowing the animators to fake her semi-resplendent nakidity in this odd looking film. And retelling old stories for new times is always fair game…I guess. I only wish that I could get excited about this "performance capture" computerized animation format. I also wish that the designers could have come up with something for Jolie as temptress that was a little more imaginative than bone-spiked heels.