Grendel Vs Beowulf Essay

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Many people often say, “The book is never the same as the movie,” and almost every time, this saying is true. When watching a movie after reading the book, there tend to be multiple situations that catch the audience's eye. Although there are some similarities between Beowulf the epic and the movie Beowulf and Grendel, there are numerous factors that differ. The differences that stood out most are the differences in the character’s levels of complexity and why the movie needed to include extra characters that were not involved of the epic. One character that obviously has the most difference in complexity is Beowulf. In the epic the people, including Beowulf himself, think of him as more of a God, while in the movie he is more of man. There are countless examples of this dissimilarity of complexity in Beowulf the epic and Hollywood’s adaptation. For instance, in the epic, every time Beowulf introduced himself or compares himself to another person, Beowulf would always boast about himself. Beowulf, who had the strength of 30 men, was more deity than man. (Heaney, Seamus, trans.…show more content…
Seeing that Beowulf is humanized in the movie, the audience is able to feel Beowulf’s pain, emotions, and confusion. The greatest difference is illustrated in the way Beowulf is trying to figure out why Grendel is the way he is. Throughout the whole movie, Beowulf believed that there was always a reason as to why Grendel was killing and taking the lives of multiple people. He also wondered why Grendel would not fight him. Once Beowulf found out that Grendel was only killing the ones who were involved in the murder of Grendel’s father, Beowulf was then able to understand and express sorrow for the troll known as Grendel and his

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