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Hrothgar’s Early Reign (Lines 64–85)
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Beowulf, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Family and Tribe
Good Warriors and Good Kings
Fame, Pride, and Shame
Repetition and Change
Christianity and Paganism
Summary
Analysis
The Danes celebrate the completion of Heorot with a feast, at which Hrothgar's bard sings about the creation of the Earth.
As a mead-hall, Heorot, like the Earth, is a source of life for its people.
Themes
But the monster Grendel, a descendent of Cain and therefore an outcast from society, hears the singing from his home in the swamp. These sounds of community and merriment fill him with anger.
That night, Grendel visits Heorot as the Danes are sleeping. Grendel seizes thirty warriors and carries them to his den to kill and eat them. The next night Grendel repeats his raid. After that, the Danes abandon Heorot to Grendel after nightfall. This situation continues for twelve years.
Grendel turns Heorot, the heart of Danish society, into a slaughterhouse. Grendel the outcast has, symbolically, made the Danes outcasts. The defeat shames the Danes.
Themes
Literary Devices
The narrator notes that unlike men, Grendel has no desire to end the feud, or to pay compensation for those he kills and thus make peace with their families. Hrothgar can neither make peace with Grendel, nor destroy him.
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In despair, Hrothgar and the Danes prayed to their heathen gods. The narrator pities them, since they did not know of the true "Lord God" and were therefore praying to demons to save them from a monster.
Here the narrator says that the Danes of the time were not Christians. However, the characters speeches later in the text seem to contradict this statement.
Themes
Literary Devices
