You’re obviously wondering why the title “Monster Mash” truth be told I’m still listening to my Halloween playlist, and the Misfits came on and I figured “that’d be a good title”.
Beowulf is an old Northern European Ango Saxon, Danish, Norwegian epic. As a reader you will notice many similarities of this epic to many known classical epics such as Gilgamesh. In fact I think this epic is a Ango Saxon version of Gilgamesh for many reasons.
The first reasons I believe they’re similar are the characters you have as the protagonist. Beowulf who has these super human strengths given to him by some holy chance, and Grendel an antagonist who has the same equal strength and powers has Beowulf. Both of these characters are basically equals, just like Gilgamesh and Enkindu. Grendel like Enkindu doesn’t physically look one hundred percent human. Grendel is an ogre like humanoid, while Enkindu is basically a human Minotaur. Beowulf and Gilgamesh both have human features who are possibly the offspring of a god of some sort. I believe the reason both epics have characters with nemesis’s is because it wouldn’t make a heroic epic interesting without a character that is a challenge to the hero of the story.
Another interesting similarity is the fact that both stories are heroic epics, and in every culture story listeners and readers love having a hero. Is it something that we as human beings naturally like to hear? Do we like constantly having a fictional example of good and bad? I can’t quite answer these questions because I feel that I’ve been programed to constantly be on the side of both characters mostly the good. However, to some degree I think there is a reason every story has a hero and a villain and that’s because in life we’re either made happy or sad. Everything in life has to radical spectrums with little things in between. These epics not only have two complete opposites, but little flaws between them. For instance in Beowulf his flaw was taking too much pride in himself which eventually became his downfall, here we see a hero turn bad and observe that radical good end of the spectrum make it’s way to another side. Gilgamesh’s flaw was his arrogance, his pride of avoiding death and too be immortal was what inevitably became his end.
Both stories teach us a valuable lesson about life, too much of anything is never good. No matter how good or how bad one is their appetite for more will lead them to another end of life’s spectrum. Lastly, to bring it back to the very first in class discussion of the origins of epics I believe all these heroic epics are the same story derived from some original one could be Gilgamesh, could be older, or just human nature of a hero and a nemesis, but no matter what every epic has a life message in them about the paths we as human beings take.
(I see everyone has pictures on their blog, so here’s a picture of Gilgamesh and Ekindu being best friends next to each eachother)
