The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 68, No.

286, 633–649
doi: 10.1093/res/hgx002
Advance Access Publication Date: 17 February 2017

Essential Incongruities in Grendel’s Final Attack

Dennis Cronan

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ABSTRACT
Readers have long recognized that the sleep of Beowulf’s men as they await Grendel’s
arrival in Heorot is a peculiar incongruity in this scene. Early scholars attributed this
oddity to an undigested element of the underlying folktale; literary critics focused on
the structure and aesthetics of the scene have simply accepted this sleep, while some
recent oral-formulaic studies have attributed it to the imperatives of an oral-derived
theme. Yet no one has realized that two aspects of Grendel’s approach are equally in-
congruous: his intention to ensnare someone in this hall which has been empty for
twelve years, and his purposeless rage as he pushes open the door. When we compare
this scene to the brief account of Grendel’s first attack, it becomes apparent that the
poet has withheld many of the details which belong to this initial attack, delaying their
occurrence until his final approach to the hall, when they are dramatically much more
effective. This postponement, with its disregard for narrative logic, provides suspense
and uncertainty for a combat scene which would otherwise be entirely predictable, and
it reveals the inner horror and vacuity of Grendel’s existence.

Lines 702b–45a of Beowulf, which describe Grendel’s gradual approach to Heorot,

his entry into the hall and his rapid tearing and devouring of a sleeping Geat, have
received a wide range of critical attention in the past, although the passage has been
less discussed in recent decades. In 1954 Arthur G. Brodeur initiated a dramatic shift
in the critical attitudes toward this passage, arguing that these lines present an aes-
thetically effective scene which has the power to engage and move the imagination
of the audience. Before Brodeur’s intervention, most discussions of this passage
viewed it as unsatisfying in a number of ways, and attributed aspects which appear in-
congruous or problematic, such as the sleep of the Geatish retainers and Beowulf’s
observation of Grendel’s slaughter of one of his men, to the poet’s mishandling of
his folktale source(s). Such explanations for these apparently incongruous features
posit a poet who either misunderstood his source or was constrained in some way by
a narrative pattern of the folktale upon which he based his story. In contrast,
Brodeur argues that these features ‘owe their shape not so much to “confusion” or
“blurring” as to the conscious artistry of a poet who manipulated his material wisely
and effectively to his purpose’.1 He thus dismisses the concerns of earlier critics by

1 Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, ‘Design for Terror in the Purging of Heorot’, Journal of English and Germanic
Philology, 53 (1954), 503–13; 503. Because this article has been incorporated into chapter four of his The
Art of Beowulf (Berkeley, CA, 1959), it is rarely cited.

C The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press 2017; all rights reserved
V

 633
634  Dennis Cronan

demonstrating that the elements of the passage which seem peculiar or incongruous
play an essential role in the development of the scene. Brodeur’s article was followed
by a series of discussions which developed and expanded his emphasis on the artistry
of the passage, analysing the gradual and ominous build-up of Grendel’s approach,
the lexical repetitions and variations, the frequent shifts in perspective and the con-
cise but highly effective description of the violence of the monster’s entry into the

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hall and his attack on one of the sleeping Geats.2 Like Brodeur, these critics re-
sponded to the text as it is, focusing on the effectiveness of the passage instead of the
incongruities.
Although it is possible that this scene has been influenced by an underlying folk-
tale, the analyses of the artistic effectiveness of the passage have demonstrated that
the poet could hardly have been constrained or confused by a narrative pattern in his
source. The incongruous features are as much a part of the overall impact of the pas-
sage as the repetitions of com, the shifts in perspective, and the gradual increase in
terror. Indeed, Brodeur argues that the slaughter of Hondscioh is the final and culmi-
nating horror of a steadily ascending sequence. If this is the case—and I believe it
is—then the death of this Geat is essential to the impact of the scene, as is the sleep
that falls upon Beowulf’s men the moment they lie down. There is, moreover, an-
other incongruity in the passage which has so far been overlooked: the poet does not
present the approach of a Grendel who has entered and occupied a Heorot empty of
human prey every night for twelve years. That Grendel presumably would not be
planning to entrap (besyrwan, 713a) a human being in the hall before he even enters,
nor would he be enraged (gebolgen, 723b) when he swings open the door because he
would have no reason to expect the presence of warriors in a hall which has been
empty for thousands of nights. Grendel’s intent and his rage in this scene are just as
inexplicable as the deep sleep of the Geats. Both features are out of place at this
point in the story: there is no reason for the approaching Grendel to assume that the
hall is occupied for the first time in twelve years, while the Geats know all too
well that they are awaiting the arrival of a creature who could easily destroy them
(691–6a). The sleep of the warriors and the rage and intentions of the attacker are
features which belong to Grendel’s first visit to the hall, where he slays thirty re-
tainers on ræste ‘in bed’ (122b). The poet presents only a brief, distanced account of
this first attack, postponing the fuller, more detailed account of Grendel’s approach
and violence for lines 702b–45a. By including many of the motifs of the ‘sleeping
after the Feast’ theme recently identified by Paul Battles, a theme which properly be-
longs only to an unexpected attack such as Grendel’s first, the poem trades strict nar-
rative logic for intensity and suspense, generating all the horror and apprehension
that can be produced by a mysterious night-stalking terror who is about to burst in
upon sleeping men.

2 A useful bibliography for Grendel’s approach to the hall can be found in R. D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork and
John Niles (eds), Klaeber’s Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, 4th edn (Toronto, 2008), 158, note to lines
702b–36a. The more recent Hideki Watanabi, ‘Grendel’s Approach to Heorot Revisited: Repetition,
Equivocation, and Anticipation in Beowulf 702b–727’, in Osamu Imahayashi et al. (eds), Aspects of the
History of English Language and Literature (Frankfurt, 2010), 187–97, can be added to this list. Studies
which are relevant to my argument will be addressed in the course of my discussion.
 Grendel’s Final Attack  635

Early twentieth-century scholars such as Klaeber, Chambers and Lawrence

thought the incongruous elements of this scene could be explained by drawing upon
the research of Friedrich Panzer into the folktale analogues to Beowulf’s fights
against Grendel and his mother.3 One of the characteristic features of the complex of
tales that Panzer called ‘The Bear’s Son’ is that a series of defenders often await the
attacker in succession, each on his own. Klaeber speculates that the sleep of the

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Geats reflects this underlying tale in which the defenders who precede the hero fail
because they cannot remain awake.4 Similarly, Lawrence and Chambers explain
Beowulf’s failure to defend Hondscioh as a residue from the folktale in which ‘the
younger hero had to wait until his older or more renowned companions had fought
and failed’.5 These explanations would be more convincing if there were at least
some sign of failed defenders immediately preceding Beowulf. But the only other de-
fenders are the Danes who vowed over their ale cups to await Grendel and then per-
ished in the encounter twelve years earlier (480–8), a span of time that is too great
for there to be any connection with the hero. Lawrence’s words quoted above as-
sume that the motif of a succession of defenders culminating in the triumphant hero
is often connected to another motif, that of the hero who is either younger or deval-
ued by his companions and is thus forced to wait until they all have had their turn. It
is clear from Beowulf’s first entrance into the story that this latter motif is absent
from the poem: he is not one defender among others, he is the only defender and
the clear hero of the story.
Even on their own terms these explanations of an incompletely adapted folktale
are unconvincing. No one attempts to argue that Beowulf retains an entire complex
of incongruous motifs; instead the claim seems to be that the sleep of the Geats and
the uncontested devouring of Hondscioh are ‘leftovers’, or perhaps we could say
‘echoes’, from the underlying folktale. We apparently are to understand that these
echoes have become detached from the motifs of the younger/devalued hero and
the successive defenders and for some reason are retained by the poet in a scene in
which there is no motivation for them. But the incongruity of the sleeping defenders
and the devouring of Hondscioh are not, in themselves, sufficient reason for deriving
these features from an incompletely altered tale when the motifs to which they are
usually connected are absent from the poem. Even if the poet were constrained by
the tale he was adapting, why would he be compelled to retain these particular fea-
tures while the related motifs are dropped? Lawrence himself claims that the poet
used only those portions of ‘The Bear’s Son’ that were compatible with the ‘historical

3 Friedrich Panzer, Studien zur germanischen Sagengeschichte, vol. 1: Beowulf (Munich, 1912), esp. 96 ff. and
267. For a more recent discussion of the connections between the poem, folktale and the extensive ana-
logues in Old Norse, see J. Michael Stitt, Beowulf and the Bear’s Son: Epic, Saga, and Fairytale in Northern
Germanic Tradition and Fairytale in Northern Germanic Tradition (New York, NY, 1992).
4 Fr. Klaeber, Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, 3rd edn (Lexington, MA, 1950), 154, note to line 703.
5 W. W. Lawrence, Beowulf and Epic Tradition (Cambridge, MA, 1930), 176. See also R. W. Chambers,
Beowulf: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem with a Discussion of the Stories of Offa and Finn, 3rd edn,
with a supplement by C. L. Wrenn (Cambridge, 1959), 64: ‘For in the folk-tale, the companions and the
hero await the foe singly, in succession: the turn of the hero comes last, after all his companions have been
put to shame.’ For a nineteenth-century Danish version of this folktale, see Stitt, Beowulf and the Bear’s
Son, 14–19.
636  Dennis Cronan

setting’ and omitted others.6 If the poet could omit some, he surely had the ability to
omit whatever he chose, and he was not constrained by features of an underlying
folktale.
More recent analyses that develop what Harry Kavros has termed the ‘feast-sleep
theme’ have uncovered the oral dynamics which have contributed to some of the
incongruities present in Grendel’s approach. As Kavros points out, the poem pre-

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sents sleep as a natural state after a feast, and in terms of this theme it is the waking
Beowulf who is incongruous, not the sleeping Geats.7 This insight raises the possibil-
ity that the response of the poem’s original audience to the behaviour of the Geats in
this scene may have been completely opposite to that of many modern readers.
Kavros’ recognition of the presence of the feast-sleep theme in Beowulf has been sup-
ported by Joanne Foley’s identification of four formulaic systems focusing on feasting
and/or sleeping, all of which contribute to this theme.8 A recent and important art-
icle by Paul Battles develops their insights into a more extended theme, and his dis-
cussions of the presence of this theme in other poems provides valuable perspectives
on the approach of Grendel.
Battles identifies six constituent motifs in the oral-derived theme he terms ‘Sleeping
after the Feast’: ‘the victim (a) feasts, (b) sleeps, and (c) is unaware of his impending
doom; the aggressor (d) approaches the hall, (e) enters and looks at the victims, and
(f) attacks or threatens them’. The ‘feasting’ motif involves ‘the consumption of alco-
holic beverages in company’. Battles regards the feast, the sleep and the attack as the
most essential elements, and argues that whenever characters sleep after a feast an at-
tack or a threatening situation inevitably follows.9 His discussion of the occurrences of
the theme in other poems, such as Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 108–19 and

6 Lawrence, Beowulf, 174.

7 Harry Kavros, ‘Swefan æfter symble: The Feast-Sleep theme in Beowulf’, Neophilologus, 65 (1981), 120–8;
122, 126.
8 Joanne De Lavan Foley, ‘Feasts and Anti-Feasts in Beowulf and the Odyssey’, in John Miles Foley (ed.),
Oral Traditional Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord (Columbus, OH, 1981), 235–61. Because this
article and Kavros’ were published in the same year, neither one cites the other. Another article which
addresses this theme is Brian McFadden, ‘Sleeping after the Feast: Deathbeds, Marriage Beds, and the
Power Structure of Heorot’, Neophilologus, 84 (2000), 629–46. Although McFadden builds upon the earlier
discussions of this theme, he takes it in a novel direction, arguing that the occurrences of the words bed
and ræst serve as lexical clues to power shifts in Heorot.
9 Paul Battles, ‘Dying for a Drink: “Sleeping after the Feast” Scenes in Beowulf, Andreas, and the Old English
Poetic Tradition’, Modern Philology, 112 (2015), 435–57; 437, 438 and 441. As he states (436, n7), his use
of the term ‘theme’ does not imply that any of the poems he discusses were orally composed. Other intri-
guing analyses of the passage in terms of an oral-derived theme or type-scene include John Miles Foley,
Immanent Art: From Structure to Meaning in Traditional Oral Epic (Bloomington, IN, 1991), 231–42, who
sees the passage as an example of a theme he calls ‘Battle with the Monster’, and Marilynn Desmond,
‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Tradition’, Oral Tradition, 7 (1992), 258–83, who describes Grendel’s at-
tacks as a type-scene with four elements, ‘The Monster Attacks a Hall’. Foley, however, does not include
either the feast or the sleep of the Geats, while Desmond omits the connection with feasting. Both scholars
limit their analyses to attack scenes in Beowulf, so they are missing the perspectives provided by other
poems in Battles’ approach. Desmond presents a brief but useful discussion of critical use of the terms
‘theme’ and ‘type-scene’ in analyses of Old English poetic structure (260–1). On this topic see also Donald
Fry, ‘Old English Formulaic Themes and Type-scenes,’ Neophilologus, 52 (1968), 48–54, John Miles Foley,
Traditional Oral Epic: The Odyssey, Beowulf, and the Serbo-Croatian Return Song (Berkeley, CA, 1990),
329–35, and also his ‘The Oral Theory in Context’, in John Miles Foley (ed.), Oral Traditional Literature:
A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord (Columbus, OH, 1981), 79–91.
 Grendel’s Final Attack  637

Noah’s drunkenness in Genesis A 1562–84b, reveals that the attack or threat can be
much more nebulous than Grendel’s very physical slaughter and consumption of the
sleeping Danes at the beginning of Beowulf. In the case of Nebuchadnezzar it is the
dream itself which is the danger, since it presents a threat from God, while Noah is nei-
ther directly threatened nor harmed. Battles ingeniously (and I believe, correctly)
argues that the poet of Genesis A introduces this threat by presenting Ham as a trai-

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tor and by associating Noah’s drunkenness with the expulsion from paradise
(GenA 1573–6).10 Both of these passages demonstrate, on the one hand, how poets
can adjust certain motifs to integrate an external source, and on the other, how malle-
able these elements can be even as the theme maintains its identity.
Battles argues that the Geats fall asleep in lines 703b–4 ‘because “feasting” and
“death” conjure up the missing element “sleep”’, and the convention of the theme is
stronger than verisimilitude. Although this explanation asserts that the poet is con-
strained by the inherited structure of the scene, he then argues that the inclusion of
the sleep motif enables the poet to play with the theme to reverse the audience’s ex-
pectations: one of the ‘victims’ remains awake, and the intruder is defeated.11 His
two-fold argument appears to imply that although the sleep of the Geats inevitably
emerges from the conjunction of ‘feasting’ and ‘death’, the poet consented to this
emergence and exercised his aesthetic autonomy by modifying the resulting theme
for his own purposes.
However, the poet’s autonomy in this scene extends beyond what Battles’ argu-
ment implies. Motif (c) ‘the victim is unaware of his impending doom’ is omitted en-
tirely, as it must be, given that Beowulf and his men are waiting for Grendel. Battles
does not regard this motif as part of the essential core of the theme, yet all the other
victims of attacks he examines are unaware of what is in store for them. This motif is
thus as constant an element of the theme as any other, and its omission here reflects
one of the ways in which the theme is an awkward fit for the narrative context.
Feasting is one of the three elements he views as essential, and this motif is much
weaker in this scene than in the other examples. With the sole exception of this pas-
sage, all nine of the occurrences he identifies of the ‘Sleep after Feast’ theme which
focus on individual humans emphasize intoxication or alcohol consumption.12 In
each of these instances the sleep is connected with drinking and intoxication within
the scene itself (see p. 13 below for examples). This explicit link is missing from
Grendel’s approach to Heorot. There is no mention of drink or intoxication. There
have been no references to drinking or feasting since lines 612b–30, where
Wealhþeow moves around the hall serving mead, completing her circuit by giving
Beowulf a medoful ‘cup of mead’ (624b). Beowulf drinks this cup, but the emphasis
in the text is upon him and especially upon the beot he utters over the cup in lines
632–8, not on his men or the consumption of drink.13 Indeed, despite the presence

10 Battles, ‘Dying for a Drink’, 445–6.

11 Battles, ‘Dying for a Drink’, 441.
12 Out of the twelve scenes Battles addresses, two do not include individual human feasters: In Beo 559–
69a, the hero deprives the merefiscas of a feast and puts them to ‘sleep’ with his sword; Beo 1002b–8a is a
figurative passage in which life is a feast and death a sleep.
13 On the heroic practice of boasting, see Barbara Nolan and Morton W. Bloomfield, ‘Beotword, Gilpcwidas,
and the Gilphlæden Scop of Beowulf’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 79 (1980), 499–516. For a
638  Dennis Cronan

of drink and two occurrences of the word symbel (489a and 619a), the entire scene
from the arrival of the Geats in Heorot up to the encounter with Grendel is devoted
to the serious business of vetting Beowulf as a potential defender of the hall, first
through his conversation with Hroðgar, then through Unferð’s challenge and finally
through Wealhþeow’s bestowal of the cup which elicits the hero’s final beot. This
scene is not at all like the feast celebrating the completion of Heorot or the later cele-

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bration of the defeat of Grendel, and it is certainly not like the indulgence in drink
seen in other examples of the ‘Sleeping after the Feast’ theme Battles discusses.
Although the motif of the feast with its concomitant drink is present in the scene
leading up to the encounter with Grendel, it is not particularly prominent, and as we
shall see, the narrator’s attribution of the sleep of the Geats to their trust in God’s
will (705b–7) neutralizes the connection between feasting and sleeping. Even though
Grendel’s approach and attack may well be one of the fullest examples of ‘Sleeping
after the Feast’, this theme does not emerge at this point in the story because of the
imperatives of convention, but because the poet has carefully manipulated the occur-
rences of the theme, postponing its most developed realization until this passage.
The poet’s artistry is apparent not only in this passage itself, but also in the bare-
bones presentation of Grendel’s first attack (115–25). The postponement of a full
and detailed depiction of Grendel’s approach and violence until the evening when
Beowulf lies in wait for him preserves the maximum impact of this description for
the most effective point possible, the battle between the hero and the marauder.
Michael Lapidge has pointed out that when the Geats settle in the hall for the
night, neither they nor the audience have a clear impression of Grendel’s appearance.
Although we know of Grendel, we do not know what he looks like, and our inability
to visualize him contributes to the terrifying impact of his approach.14 It is not
merely that the poet holds back all description of the creature until the encounter
with Beowulf, where some of his physical features are finally revealed. Until
Grendel’s final visit to Heorot the narrative keeps us at a distance from his actions as
well as his appearance. Although his attacks on Heorot and the Danes are the central
events of the poem up to this point, the narrative focuses primarily on the human re-
sponses to these attacks—the shock, grief and despair of the Danes, Beowulf’s re-
solve and his journey to Denmark to fight the beast, and the social interactions
between Beowulf and the Danes in the hall—instead of the attacks themselves. Even
the first attack is presented from a distance, in a neutral report that does little to en-
gage the fears and apprehension of the audience:

Gewat ða neosian, syþðan niht becom,

hean huses, hu hit Hringdene
æfter beorþege gebun hæfdon.
Fand þa ðær inne æþelinga gedriht
swefan æfter symble; sorge ne cuðon,
discussion which focuses on vows made over an ale or mead cup, see Stefan Einarsson, ‘Old English Beot
and Old Icelandic Heitstrenging’, PMLA, 49 (1934), 975–93.
14 Michael Lapidge, ‘Beowulf and the Psychology of Terror’, in Helen Damico and John Leyerle (eds),
Heroic Poetry in the Anglo-Saxon World: Studies in Honor of Jess B. Bessinger, Jr. (Kalamazoo, MI, 1993),
372–402; 382–3.
 Grendel’s Final Attack  639

wonsceaft wera. Wiht unhælo,

grim ond grædig, gearo sona wæs,
reoc ond reþe, ond on ræste genam
þritig þegna; þanon eft gewat
huðe hremig to ham faran,
mid þære wælfylle wica neosan. (115–25)

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(After night came he went to attack the lofty house, to inspect how the Ring-Danes
had settled in it after the beer-drinking. He found there within a band of nobles
sleeping after a feast; they did not know sorrow, the misery of men. The creature of
evil, fierce and greedy, was ready at once, savage and cruel, and he seized thirty re-
tainers in their beds; from there he went back, exulting in his spoils, travelling home,
going to his dwelling with an abundance of the slain.)
Grendel’s initial intentions are exploratory, and as soon as he finds the sleeping
Danes, who are oblivious to the horror that is looming over them, he becomes fierce
and greedy, seizing thirty men. A mere two verses (122b–3a) are devoted to the
slaughter, with only genam ‘take, seize, take away’, a rather colourless verb, describing
the action. The lack of colour and detail in these lines can be seen most clearly by
comparing them with a later passage in the poem, well after Grendel is dead, where
we encounter another, much more vivid account of this first attack. As Beowulf is
about to behead Grendel’s corpse beneath the mere, we are told (1580–4a) that the
creature slew (sloh) Hroðgar’s hearth-companions while they were asleep, ate (fræt)
fifteen of them there in the hall and carried off (offerede) another fifteen. These verbs
are all more specific and descriptive than genam. Even the nouns and adjectives in
the first account make a stronger impression than the verb: he departs huðe hremig
‘exulting in his spoils’ (124a) with his wælfylle (125a), a hapax compound which can
mean both ‘fill of slaughter’ and ‘an abundance of the slain.’ Yet this oscillation be-
tween ‘corpses’ and ‘what he has devoured’ leaves an indistinct impression, and even
huðe hremig remains rather vague in the absence of any detailed description of these
spoils. We are given no description of Grendel at all.
The second attack is even less specific: He eft gefremede / morðbeala mare ond no
mearn fore, / fæhðe ond fyrene; wæs to fæst on þam. (135b–7) (He again performed
more slaughter, hostile acts and violence and he did not shrink from them; he was
too fixed on those deeds.) Grendel’s subsequent entries into the hall receive no de-
scription at all; they are embraced in a generalizing observation that covers his ac-
tions over the next twelve years: Swa rixode ond wið rihte wan, / ana wið eallum,
oðþæt idel stod / husa selest. (144–6a) (Thus he held sway and contended against
what is right, one against all, until the best of houses stood empty.)
As a result of this narrative reticence, we know very little about him before his ap-
proach on the night when Beowulf awaits him. We know neither his physical appear-
ance nor the way he behaves. All visual representation has been withheld from us.
When he begins his approach in line 702b we are, in a sense, encountering him for
the first time. Only in this scene do we actually see him in action instead of merely
receiving reports about the results of his actions.
It is partly for this reason that while the sleeping Geats immediately strike us as
incongruous, we simply accept Grendel’s intentions and anger, which are equally out
640  Dennis Cronan

of place. We have not heard anything specific about his attacks or his behaviour for
over 500 lines, and we are willing to assume, purely on the basis of his intentions,
that he knows the Geats are in the hall. Similarly, we have not yet received a detailed
description of his approach—for all we know, he may have entered the hall in this
manner every night for twelve years! Moreover, we are well aware that Beowulf and
his men are in the hall waiting for him, so Grendel’s battle-fury and his plan to entrap

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someone (712–13) before he has any way of knowing that the hall is occupied do
not seem unreasonable to us. Yet they are every bit as incongruous as the sleep of
the Geats. Even the fiercest, hungriest and most hopeful monster would grow jaded
after twelve years of entering an empty hall night after night. Until he sees the sleep-
ing men and exults (his mod ahlog, 731b), there is no reason for his rage and his
plans. This exultation and his now justified, if mistaken, wistfylle wen ‘expectation of a
fill of feasting’ (734a) contrast with the incongruity of his earlier intention (712–13)
of ensnaring just one person in the hall.
Because we know so little about Grendel’s habits we are willing to assume a back-
ground for his intentions and anger which the poem does not provide—but there is
no such background. His first incursion into the hall is a response to the celebration
of the newly-built Heorot, and we are perhaps inclined to suppose that his expect-
ations and his rage as he approaches for the last time are also a response to sounds
from the hall. Yet unlike the account of Grendel’s first visit, the passage describing
his final approach itself does not make this link. The first attack is explicitly con-
nected to the pain he suffers as he listens to the dream . . . hludne in healle (88b–9a)
‘loud festivity in the hall’ for a number of days (dogora gehwam ‘each of days’, 88a).
Dogor does not mean ‘daytime’ but the entire day, a period of twenty-four hours.15
As he listens to he hall-joys he in þystrum bad (87b) ‘lingered in darkness’, a phrase
which makes it clear that he is lurking outside during the night, not the day. When
he finally attacks it is syþðan niht becom (115b) ‘after night came’. The poem repeat-
edly emphasizes that he is a creature of the dark, a sceadugenga (703a) ‘a walker in
darkness’, who operates only at night. Although the feasting and rejoicing in Heorot
trigger his first attack, from that point onward he needs no provocation and he con-
tinually occupies the hall sweartum nihtum (167b) ‘in the black nights’ for twelve
years (147a). As a result the hall stands idel and unnyt ‘empty and unusable’ after the
light of evening becomes hidden (411b–14).
In contrast to the account of Grendel’s first attack, there are no references to fes-
tivities in the hall immediately before his final night-time approach, even though ear-
lier in the day the Danes have entertained Beowulf and his men with music,
conversation and drink. Such references would be unnecessary and inappropriate:
unnecessary because Grendel visits and occupies the hall every night; inappropriate
because he, a creature of the night, knows nothing of the arrival of the Geats or the
nature of the activities in the hall during the day. All these activities cease as soon as
night approaches (644b–51).

15 Eric P. Hemp, ‘A Semantic Archaism,’ Linguistic Inquiry, 4 (1973), 246–51; 249. See also ‘dogor’ in A.
Cameron, A.C. Amos, and A. diPaolo Healey (eds), Dictionary of Old English: A to G Online (2007),
<http://doe.utoronto.ca/pages/index.html>, accessed 13 September 2016.
 Grendel’s Final Attack  641

We, of course, know that there has been a momentous change in the hall: even
though the song of the scop and the sounds of speech do not stem from a full-blown
feast, they are not merely the everyday sounds of life in the court, but are instead
signs of hope and excitement. But Grendel is a creature who roams at night, and
there is no reason why he would have perceived this change. By occupying Heorot
he has successfully silenced the Danes at night for twelve years, but life in the hall is

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still theirs during the day, and Beowulf and his men arrive at a fully functioning
court. The conventional activities of a hall in a heroic culture—the dispensing of
drink, the bestowal of gifts, the performance of song and music, the conversations
and the movements of the retainers going about their business inside and outside the
court—have continued despite Grendel’s nightly occupations. Beowulf’s encounter
with the coastguard and his reception in the hall provide sufficient evidence of this
continuity. Even if we were inclined to assume, with no textual support whatsoever,
that Grendel, who moves only at night, somehow manages to spy on Heorot during
the day, the sounds produced by the reception of the Geats would not have differed
substantially from those of other days. And most importantly, the sounds and activ-
ities of this day, as on every day, cease before night. All the Danes leave the hall.
Although Beowulf and his men remain behind, Grendel has no way of perceiving
their presence. As he approaches the hall it is silent: the Danes have departed,
Beowulf is watching, and his men are asleep. There is nothing to trigger his expect-
ation that he will manna cynnes / sumne besyrwan (712–13) (entrap some one of
mankind in the hall).
Indeed, no matter how we read the context of Grendel’s final approach, his inten-
tion to entrap just one person is incongruous in and of itself. Up to this point he has
encountered only two situations: the hall is either empty, as on the overwhelming
majority of nights for the past twelve years, or it is occupied by a group of warriors.
In his first attack he slew some thirty men (123a). In his second attack he commits
morðbeala mare ‘more slaughter’ (136a; a collective singular). At this point the
Danes cease to sleep in the hall (138–43), and as Hroðgar tells Beowulf, oretmæcgas
‘warriors’ often vowed over their ale-cups to await Grendel (480–3). But in the
morning there is nothing left but blood, and he possessed ‘fewer loyal men’ (holdra
þy læs, 487b). Grendel has never encountered one person alone in the hall, and if he
anticipated the presence of a group of men, he would intend to slaughter them all,
just as he has done in the past. The presence of sumne in line 713 is a sign that his
approach has been carefully framed.
Despite the excellent commentary that critics have presented on the construc-
tion and impact of this scene, the inappropriateness of Grendel’s initial intentions
and rage has not been recognized. The description of his intentions is quite
clear: mynte se manscaða manna cynnes / sumne besyrwan in sele þam hean (712–3)
(The wicked ravager intended to ensnare some one of mankind in that high hall).
Commentators who have addressed these lines have shied away from both their literal
meaning and the implications of this meaning. Although Richard Ringler has pro-
duced a perceptive and telling discussion of the irony generated by the defeat of
Grendel’s expectations, a reading in which the verb myntan plays a central role, he
misses the incongruity here. Grendel, he states, assumes ‘that the conditions of the
past twelve years still obtain; after a day’s anticipation he will be looking forward to
642  Dennis Cronan

another night’s geweald in Heorot’. But if Grendel ‘assumes that this evening will fol-
low the usual pattern’,16 of solitary rule in the hall during the night, how could he be
intending to entrap someone there? Grendel has been unable to entrap anyone there
for thousands of nights. His intention of doing so on this night can hardly be seen as
an anticipation of business as usual.
Stanley Greenfield connects lines 712–13 to the abandonment of the hall and ac-

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knowledges Grendel’s desires by observing that he ‘has presumably not found game
plentiful in Heorot since his initial ravages twelve years ago, as witness his modest
hope of ensnaring one man’. This approach modifies and improves Ringler’s reading
somewhat, but at the expense of altering the meaning of the verb myntan from ‘in-
tend, think’ to ‘hope’.17 By reducing Grendel’s intention to a hope, this alteration
makes it possible to reconcile his thoughts with the twelve-year absence of human
prey in the hall. Of course, all of Grendel’s intentions ultimately turn out to be vain
hopes, but the irony that Ringler has demonstrated is lost if we reduce his intentions
to mere hopes at the moment he conceives them.
Nonetheless, if Grendel’s intentions are stronger and more definite than a hope,
they are indeed, as Greenfield observes, fairly small. The contrast between this initial
expectation of entrapping just one human and the creature’s wistfylle wen ‘expectation
of a fill of feasting’ (734a) when he sees the sleeping troop of Geats hews fairly
closely to the mental sequence we would expect him to have in this situation. Based
on his experiences for the past twelve years he should have been expecting nothing
more than the same empty hall. His exultation (his mod ahlog, 731b) at the sight of
the sleeping Geats, a response that combines dark pleasure with surprise at such un-
foreseen bounty, would have fit that Grendel, a creature with no expectations, per-
fectly. That this response also fits the Grendel described in the text, the Grendel
intending to trap merely one victim, suggests that the intentions of this Grendel have
been carefully tailored to adhere as closely as possible to those that the logic of the
narrative would predict him to have. If lines 712–13 presented the anticipation of
multiple victims, reading, for example, sume (acc. pl.) instead of sumne (acc. sg.) in
713a, the incongruity would have been obvious, and there would be little or no con-
trast with the later wistfylle wen. By limiting the expectations of this creature who
once destroyed thirty thanes in one night (123a) to just one victim, the text makes it
possible for us, along with Greenfield, to take these intentions as little more than a
hope. This reduction is facilitated by the vagueness of the verb besyrwan ‘ensnare, en-
trap’ in place of a more graphic verb such as slean ‘to slay’, slitan ‘to tear’, or fretan ‘to
eat’, actions which are implied by besyrwan without being explicitly declared. But no
matter how reduced it may be, the presence of his intention is enough to emphasize
that Grendel is approaching the hall not merely as a nightly occupier, but as a man-
scaða ‘wicked ravager’ (712a) intending violence to anyone he encounters, a creature
who is ready to slay and consume victims whenever he can.

16 Richard N. Ringler, ‘Him seo wen geleah: The Design for Irony in Grendel’s Last Visit to Heorot,’
Speculum, 41 (1966), 49–67; 53.
17 Stanley Greenfield, The Interpretation of Old English Poems (London, 1972), 128–9. In contrast Andy
Orchard, A Critical Companion to Beowulf (Cambridge, 2003), 191, points out that the repetition of mynte
(lines 712a, 731a, and 762a) emphasizes the importance of Grendel’s intentions in this passage, and he
views the combat with the hero as a clash of wills.
 Grendel’s Final Attack  643

The incongruity of Grendel’s rage (ða he gebolgen wæs, 723b) when he swings
open the door of the hall is apparent when we compare it to Beowulf’s patient
battle-rage: bad bolgenmode beadwa geþinges (709) (he awaited, enraged in mind, the
outcome of battle). Beowulf’s rage, his fury at his foe, is a response to the coming
struggle. The remaining six occurrences of gebolgen and the two occurrences of bol-
genmod, with one possible exception, describe a being who is either engaged in or

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anticipating violent combat.18 But Grendel knows nothing of the struggle that awaits
him, nothing of Beowulf or the Geats until he enters the hall, and he is enraged be-
fore he enters. Yet, just as the passage is constructed to diminish our perception of
the inappropriateness of his initial intentions, so it also manages to diminish our
sense of the incongruity of his rage. We in the audience, of course, are well aware of
the approaching fight, so this adjective does not seem especially out of place.
Moreover, this is a creature who Godes yrre bær ‘bore God’s anger’ (711b), and who
is dreamum bedæled ‘deprived of joys’ (721a). Perhaps unprovoked, purposeless rage
is a constant state in such a joyless, rejected being.
This rage is directly connected to the physical action of swinging open the door
of the hall: onbræd þa bealohydig, ða he gebolgen wæs, / recedes muþan (723–4a) (now
that he was enraged, the one intending destruction swung open the mouth of the
building). At this point bealohydig could refer to the violence he seems about to un-
leash, or merely to the repeated harm he does to the Danes by occupying their hall
every night. His rage could be a battle-rage like that of Beowulf, or it could be anger
at the sheer existence of the hall he is entering, or at the frustrating emptiness of this
hall over the years. Because of the manifold uncertainties here his intentions and
rage are less incongruous than his earlier intention of trapping someone.
Immediately after these lines he steps into the building, and the point of view shifts
swiftly away from that of the entering Grendel to our perception—joined with that
of the silently watching Beowulf—of his entry and the eerie light (leoht unfæger,
727b) shining out of his eyes.19 The point of view then shifts rapidly to Grendel’s
discovery of the sleeping warriors (728–30a). His expectations, which were incon-
gruous only a moment before, are now solidly rooted in the narrative situation, al-
though his wistfulle wen remains only an expectation, in contrast with the wælfylle he
successfully carried off from his first attack (125a).
To a modern audience the incongruity of the sleeping thanes is painfully obvious,
far more glaring than that of Grendel’s intentions. A mere ten lines earlier (691–6b)
we are told that none of them expected to return home, and yet here they are, falling
asleep as soon as they lie down in the hall (703b–4). John Niles quite appropriately
describes them as falling asleep ‘as obediently as puppets in a child’s play’. He regards

18 Gebolgen: ll. 1539b, 2220b, 2304a, 2401b, 2550; gebolgne: l. 1431a; bolgenmod: ll. 709a, 1713a. The pos-
sible exception occurs in the passage describing the arrival of the Danes and Geats at the mere, where the
sound of the horn causes the sea creatures to rush away (apparently to submerge) bitre ond gebolgne ‘furi-
ous and enraged’ (1431a). But these may well be the very creatures who attack Beowulf as he descends
through the mere. For a more extensive discussion of gebolgen and bolgenmod in the poem, see Mark
Amodio, Writing the Oral Tradition: Oral Poetics and Literate Culture in Medieval England (Notre Dame,
IN, 2004), 59–63. Foley, Traditional Oral Epic, 229, suggests that gebolgen is ‘thematically associated with
the monster-fight scene in Beowulf, as a metonymic signal of the magnitude and intensity of the battle’.
19 Alain Renoir, ‘Point of View and Design for Terror in Beowulf’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 63 (1962),
154–67, presents an excellent discussion of the rapid changes in the point of view in this passage.
644  Dennis Cronan

their continued sleep as Grendel violently swings open the door and enters the hall
as an even greater anomaly.20 We are never told when they awake; their primary role
in the episode is to fall asleep and to remain that way until Grendel discovers them
sleeping (728–30a) and grabs one of them (740–1a). They later draw their swords
and stand about hoping to strike Grendel if they get a chance—a futile hope, since
we are told that swords cannot harm the creature (794b–805a).

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As Niles observes, the poem does not make the slightest attempt to explain
this sleep in a naturalistic manner. Instead, we are told that, —þæt wæs yldum cuþ /
þæt hie ne moste, þa metod nolde, / se scynscaþa under sceadu bregdan— (705b–7)
(That was known to men that the demonic ravager would not be allowed to draw
them down to the shadows when God was not willing.) Line 705b is rather puzzling
and Edward Irving wonders, ‘Who are the men to whom “it is known” that Grendel
will not be allowed to carry off the Geats’? After considering some possible alternatives
(the sleeping Geats, Christian believers in general, those who have heard the story
before) he tentatively concludes that the reference must be to those who have heard
the story before.21 But this answer assumes a specificity which is not justified by the
passage. The clause þæt wæs yldum cuþ amounts to nothing more than a vague asser-
tion that ‘everyone knows’. The poem explains (excuses?) the sleep of the warriors
by an appeal to the common knowledge that God will protect them if he wishes.
The subsequent lines remind us that Beowulf is the protection that God has provided:
ac he wæccende wraþum on andan / bad bolgenmod beadwa geþinges. (708–9) (But he
enraged, watching in enmity for the hostile one, awaited the outcome of battle.) These
lines produce a direct contrast of the hero’s alert watchfulness with the sleep of his
men. Indeed, Niles argues that the Geats fall asleep precisely for this reason, to provide
contrast with the hero and to serve as potential victims for Grendel.22 Niles views the
sleep of the Geats as a manifestation of the principle of contrast, which is found
throughout European folktales. The sleeping companions serve as a foil to emphasize
Beowulf’s heroic qualities. Unlike the early-twentieth-century attempts to explain the
incongruous sleep of the warriors by tracing it to ‘The Bear’s Son’ folktale, Niles
addresses its purpose in the story, emphasizing that the Geats fall asleep on stylistic,
not mimetic grounds.
This contrast is an important part of the passage, but neither the sleep nor the
passage as a whole are entirely products of this contrast. The sleeping warriors are es-
sential to the presentation of Grendel’s approach, entry and attack, not merely as a
contrast with the hero, because, as Niles notes, they provide potential victims. The
multiple references to this sleep—when it first falls upon the Geats (703b–4), when
Grendel discovers them (728–30a), and when he grabs Hondscioh, a slæpendne rinc
‘sleeping warrior’ (741a)—demonstrates its importance to the development of the

20 Niles, Beowulf: The Poem and its Tradition (Cambridge, MA, 1983), 167.
21 Edward B. Irving, A Reading of Beowulf (New Haven, CT, 1968), 102.
22 Niles, Beowulf, 168. See also Klaeber’s Beowulf, xciii. John M. Hill’s suggestion that ‘Perhaps Grendel is
understood as somehow projecting a powerful somnolence upon the gathered warriors in the hall’, is
hardly a naturalistic explanation, but it is an attempt to make this sleep appear motivated. See his ‘The
Sacrificial Synecdoche of Hands, Heads, and Arms in Anglo-Saxon Heroic Story’, in Benjamin C. Withers
and Jonathan Wilcox (eds), Naked Before God: Uncovering the Body in Anglo-Saxon England
(Morgantown, WV, 2003), 116–37; 124.
 Grendel’s Final Attack  645

narrative. The sleeping thanes, Grendel’s intentions and anger and the graphic de-
scription of the rending and devouring of Hondscioh all stem from the presentation
of this scene as if it were Grendel’s first attack upon the hall. All of these elements
belong to a scene in which the monster anticipates victims to slay and devour in the
hall while the victims, completely unaware of the creature’s approach, are asleep, sus-
pecting nothing. The theme which Battles describes fits such a situation.23 One of

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the advantages of Battles’ identification of the ‘Sleeping after the Feast’ theme is that
it provides an explanation for the poet’s willingness to contradict narrative expect-
ations and, indeed, his own words in lines 691–6b. Familiarity with this theme may
have been enough to obscure or soften the incongruity of this sleep for members of
the original audience. The sleep of the Geats may not have seemed any stranger to
them than Grendel’s slaughterous intentions and battle-rage have seemed to modern
audiences. However, as Kavros observes, the presence of the waking Beowulf under-
cuts the feeling of closure because it leaves the theme incomplete.24 This instance of
the theme is unlikely to proceed as others do.
The text, moreover, provides evidence that the poet knows full well how he is
manipulating the theme. As Battles observes, the words attributing the Geats’ sleep
to their trust in God’s will in lines 705b–7 indicate that the poet was aware of the
problem created by the sleep of the Geats.25 We can now go further in our conclu-
sions because Battles’ identification of the presence of the theme in other poems pro-
vides us with a new and valuable perspective on this scene. The attribution of the
Geats’ sleep to the trust in God’s will occurs precisely at the point in the narrative
where most other occurrences of this theme connect the consumption of drink and/
or intoxication with sleep. So, for example, in the account of Grendel’s first attack,
the Danes settle in the hall æfter beorþege ‘after beer-drinking’, (117a) and swefan
æfter symble ‘sleep after a feast’, (119a). In Genesis A Noah becomes wine druncen
‘drunk with wine’ (1563b) and then swæf symbelwerig ‘slept weary from the feast’
(GenA 1564a). In Daniel, when Nabuchadnezzar awakes from his sleep, we are told
that he ær swæf wingal ‘had slept flushed with wine’ (Dan 116b). In Judith,
Holofernus is so drunk that he has lost his wits: Gefeol ða wine swa druncen / se rica
on his reste middan, swa he nyste ræda nanne / on gewitlocan (Jud 67b–9a) (then the
mighty one fell upon his bed so drunk on wine that he possessed no reason in his
mind). Even the dead prison guards in Andreas are described as dreore druncne ‘drunk
on blood’ (And 991a).26 As I have pointed out above (p. 5), similar references to al-
cohol and/or the effects of intoxication appear in all the occurrences of this theme
which focus on individual humans. The lone exception is this passage in Beowulf.
We can now see that lines 705b–7 provide more than an explanation of sorts for
the unlikely sleep of the Geats: this passage is also a substitute for the explicit con-
nection other examples of the theme draw between sleep and intoxication. The poet

23 As does the type-scene presented in Desmond, ‘Beowulf’, 263.

24 Kavros, ‘Swefan æfter symble’, 126.
25 Battles, ‘Dying for a Drink’, 441.
26 Daniel is cited from R. T. Farrell (ed.), Daniel and Azarias (London, 1974); Genesis A from A. N. Doane
(ed.), Genesis A: A New Edition, Revised (Tempe, AZ, 2013); Judith from B. J. Timmer (ed.), Judith (New
York, NY, 1966); and Andreas is cited from Kenneth R. Brooks (ed.), Andreas and the Fates of the Apostles
(Oxford, 1961).
646  Dennis Cronan

has modified the theme in order to avoid the unwelcome implication that Beowulf’s
men have drunk more than they should have by substituting the rather weak explan-
ation that these men who do not expect to survive (691–6a) have put their trust en-
tirely in God’s will.
Both the logic of the narrative as a whole and our own naturalistic expectations
lead us to assume that all the defenders, not just one, would be alert and waiting.

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Similarly, the text never states nor even implies that Grendel has observed the arrival
of the Geats. He has been occupying an empty hall for the last twelve years, and he
has no reason to expect anything different on this night. In order to use the ‘Sleeping
after the Feast’ theme to underpin Grendel’s approach the poet had to alter this
theme in three ways: all the defenders are aware of the threat of the approaching
Grendel, negating feature (c) ‘the victims are unaware’; one man, Beowulf, remains
awake, contradicting feature (b) ‘sleep’; and the sleep of his men is attributed to their
trust in God’s will instead of intoxication, breaking the usual connection between fea-
tures (a) ‘feast’ and (b). The disconnect between their sleep and the drink which
embodies the feast motif demonstrates that their sleep is not an inevitable result of
the conventions of the theme. Instead the passage uses this sleep to introduce the
theme and all its violent implications. Although Grendel’s approach begins in line
702b, we learn of his violent intentions (712–13) only after the sleep of the Geats
initiates the theme in lines 705b–7. The adoption of this theme intensifies the arrival
of Grendel as a hostile, active attacker despite the fact that he has been merely an oc-
cupier of the hall for the last twelve years.27 An account which presented Grendel’s
approach and the watch of the Geats in naturalistic terms in accordance with the
overall narrative logic would have a much weaker impact and would lack much of the
suspense and the horror that the poem so graphically conveys. The poet chose effect-
iveness over logic, and by utilizing the ‘Sleeping after the Feast’ theme and present-
ing the scene as if it were the creature’s first attack, he produced an account which
emphasizes the steady, ominous approach of Grendel and then the swift violence of
him tearing and swallowing Hondscioh’s body. The passage confronts us with his ac-
tions and as a result we are directly exposed to the monster in ways that we were not
during the brief, distanced accounts of his earlier attacks. The poet has saved the full
unfolding of the walking nightmare that is Grendel for this moment. We watch his
drawn-out approach in fascination, we are startled by his brutal entry, shocked by the
eerie light from his eyes and by his exultation at his discovery of the sleeping Geats,
and finally we are aghast at the slaughter and rapid consumption of Hondscioh.
Although the ‘Sleeping after the Feast’ theme shapes the narrative sequence of
this episode and generates both contrast and suspense, in itself this theme is not a
sufficient explanation of the sleep of the Geats or the violent intentions of Grendel.
Although both the sleep and the attack are central aspects of the theme, they have
been disconnected from the motif of the feast and the intoxication it implies. The
poem uses this theme as a device to transform a scene which would otherwise

27 In an analogous (but much more striking) manner, the description of the dead guards in Andreas 990–
1007a as sleeping dreore druncne (drunk on gore, 1003a) invokes both the motif of the feast and the
theme as a whole. The identification of the presence of the theme in both this passage and in Andreas
1526b–35 is one of the most important contributions of Battles’ article.
 Grendel’s Final Attack  647

involve alert defenders and a jaded, perhaps even bored ‘attacker’ into the most sus-
penseful and exciting moment in the poem. The incongruities are there because the
poet has included as many elements of a surprise attack—the central focus of this
theme—as are compatible with the presence of a waking, watching Beowulf. The
admiring commentary this passage has received over the years indicates that the will-
ingness to ignore strict narrative logic in favour of a more graphic, dramatic and emo-

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tionally intense scene was the correct choice. This choice has produced a
considerable disjunction in the narrative, as can most easily be seen in the striking
differences between lines 691–6a, where we are told that none of the Geats expected
to return home alive, and their prompt surrender to sleep in lines 703b–7. In a very
short span we are presented with characters who fear the worst from the marauder
and yet go right to sleep as if they know nothing of the threat he poses.
Niles views this scene and the disjunction it produces in the text as examples of
what he terms the ‘barbaric’ style of the poem, using the word in a purely descriptive,
non-pejorative sense borrowed from the fine arts. He argues that the poem is not a
naturalistic narrative, but a rearrangement of the world into ‘an ethical concept of a
world’.28 The ethical quality that Niles identifies in the poem is quite pronounced in
this scene. There is, of course, the contrast between the sleep of the Geats and the
hero’s watchfulness, a contrast which encapsulates the differences between Beowulf
and ordinary men, and in addition we see here, for the first time, the full terror of
Grendel in action. Because of the disconnect from the preceding narrative context,
the incongruous features of his approach and entry discussed above take on an al-
most abstract, archetypal quality which is intensified by the detailed, repetitive ac-
count of his movements toward the hall. Grendel’s actions in this scene reveal the
essence of his being: his compulsive and ominous connection to the hall, to which
he is drawn every night, his never-resting desire, his joylessness, his apparently un-
motivated rage, and above all, the terrifying speed and violence with which he gorges
on human flesh. His actions reveal not only the external terror of his attack but also
the inner horror and evil of his existence, a horror which is heightened by the re-
peated references to his thoughts and intentions: he is not simply a monstrous crea-
ture of evil instinct from the wastes but a being who possesses human thoughts and
volition and as a result is damned for his desires and actions.
The contrast between Beowulf and his men is minor compared to the contrast
that the scene produces between the hero and the eoten ‘giant’ (761a). Katherine
O’Brien O’Keefe has shown how Grendel is humanized by the references to his men-
tal states and his description as a rinc ‘man, warrior’ (720b).29 But this human-like
quality, which is already implicit in his descent from Cain (106–14), only serves to
emphasize the spiritual and moral vacuity of his existence. It does nothing to make
him more like the waiting Beowulf. Although both of them are enraged, the roots of
their rage and the way they handle it are indicative the differences between them.

28 Niles, Beowulf, 165 and 295 n6. Although the term ‘barbaric’ has not been widely adopted, this word is
useful for describing many aspects of the poem.
29 Katherine O’Brien O’Keefe, ‘Beowulf Lines 702b–836: Transformations and the Limits of the Human’,
Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 23 (1981), 203–13.
648  Dennis Cronan

Beowulf is waiting bolgenmod ‘enraged’ (709a) because he has prepared himself for
battle with Grendel. His rage has a clear purpose and it is subordinated to his patient
watch. Before he controls Grendel, Beowulf controls himself. Even after Grendel
enters the hall the hero continues his observation instead of attacking the creature:
þryðswyð beheold / mæg Higelaces, hu se manscaða / under færgripum gefaran wolde.
(736b–8) (The powerful kinsman of Hygelac observed how the wicked ravager

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would act with his sudden attacks.) Because Grendel immediately snatches a sleeping
Geat and quickly tears and devours him (739–45a), it is easy for us to feel that the
hero is a bit too patient, that he lies there passively when he should be leaping to his
companion’s assistance. But Grendel acts so swiftly that nothing would be gained by
such a response. Beowulf’s self-control, the maintenance of his patient observation
even though he is filled with the rage of his battle-fury and provoked by the sight of
the slaughter of Hondscioh distinguishes the hero’s rage from that of the monster.
As we have seen, Grendel’s rage (ða he gebolgen wæs, ‘since he was enraged’, 723b) as
he thrusts open the door of the hall could be due to almost anything or to nothing at
all. This intense anger has no apparent purpose and it seems to be a manifestation of
his nature that he is unable to control. Beowulf journeyed to Denmark and settled
down in the hall with a clear purpose: to encounter and defeat Grendel. In contrast,
although the tripartite description of the monster’s inexorable advance to the hall
produces a sense of terror at his approach, it also reveals that he acts under compul-
sion, that despite his intention of ensnaring a victim he is there because he has to be
there, not because he chooses. He cannot resist the lure of the hall, regardless of
whether it is inhabited or not.
We see in this scene an example of what Clare Kinney terms ‘the needs of the mo-
ment’. Although each scene is a part of the whole it is also a discrete entity and pos-
sesses its ‘own poetic and narrative functions’.30 The poet’s concern for the aesthetic
needs of particular scenes leads him at times to disregard narrative consistency, as he
does here. Although the poet sacrifices consistency even with details which immedi-
ately precede this scene, he remains faithful to the inner logic, or perhaps we could
say the inner spirit, of his story. By using the ‘Sleeping after the Feast’ theme to
transfer features which belong to the monster’s first attack to the encounter between
Beowulf and Grendel the poet not only produces a highly suspenseful scene which
fully conveys the terror of the creature’s approach and attack, he also reveals the
inner horror of Grendel’s existence. Because this suspense and revelation are dramat-
ically most effective at this point in the story, the poet postponed a full description
of Grendel in action until this scene, sharply curtailing his accounts of the initial at-
tacks at the beginning of the poem. The abbreviated descriptions of those earlier at-
tacks anticipate the fuller account of Grendel’s attack presented here. The
incongruous features of this scene are, of course, essential to the impact of the pas-
sage. But they are also part of the design of the poem as a whole, not inadvertent sur-
vivals from the underlying folktale or merely elements from a theme that the poet
was compelled to include. The repetition and expansion of motifs from Grendel’s

30 Clare Kinney, ‘The Needs of the Moment: Poetic Foregrounding as a Narrative Device in Beowulf’,
Studies in Philology, 82 (1986), 295–314; 301.
 Grendel’s Final Attack  649

first attack in his last belong to the artistry of the poem. Although the construction
of this scene illustrates a concern for ‘the needs of the moment’, it is also an excellent
example of the way that local effects complement and fulfil the broader needs of the
narrative, which are fully realized here in the revelation of Grendel’s actions and
being.

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University of Nevada, Reno