Truth

When we read Beowulf in the first week, we had already depicted our own bad image of Grendel as this evil creature who lures in the night. Yet we continued to read on into Grendel and saw a different perspective. Throughout this time our idea of what is the truth has been twisted and turned. This question of who is telling the real story is constantly running through my mind. The Shaper comes into the story and tells of these heroic and devastating poems to the people of Denmark and as they listen they are drawn into his tales. Even Grendel who listens in hiding is almost dragged in, and we know that is not the life that he knows. Grendel had seemed to be hiding in his own little bubble of stories that has brought him great torture, but absorbing such a drastic life in such a quick moment of time was to much for him. He has a pure breakdown in this moment of time because of the truth. As quotes say, the truth may hurt, and it really puts a toll not only on Grendel but everyone else in the village also. While Grendel is firing up in his cave, these villagers are being inspired by the ancestral stories. They are ready to take back their lives.
We also see truth within the Dragon. And this is a cold harsh sense of honesty. He blatantly tell Grendel what his life needs to be about. He makes Grendel, a feared man-eating "beast", afraid and demeans him. The sense of truth had made Grendel feel as his life is even less that he thought of it before (which was fairly low). The Dragons cold hard advice is to "find a pile of gold and sit on it" because the truth is, our life is such a small part of existence.