Memorable Quote Essay

(Lines 151 to 161) “Sad lays were sung about the best king, the vicious raids and revenges of Grendel, his long and unrelenting feud, nothing but war; how he would never parley or make peace with any Dane nor stop his death-dealing nor pay the death-price. No counselor could ever expect fair reparation from those rabid hands. All were endangered; young and old were hunted down by that dark death-shadow who lurked and swooped in the long nights.”

               In this quote it describes what Grendel had been doing for the past twelve years. He had been coming in at night and killing innocent people whether they were young or old, then refused to pay the “death-price” afterwards. I will now give my thoughts and opinions on this quote and why I believe that it is important.

               The Danes found it especially terrifying that Grendel had no friends or people that he wouldn’t kill, except his mother. This means that he shows no remorse or mercy for anybody which means that if you were unlucky enough to stumble upon him at night he was going to try and kill you. During this time people heavily believed in “death-prices” or compensation for a family members death. Besides killing innocent people, not paying their death-price was a huge social injustice because people did not receive anything to help with their grieving which means all they have is loss.

               “No counselor could ever expect fair reparation from those rabid hands.” This part of the quote says that Grendel has rabid hands which I believe means that he is uncontrollable when it comes to killing and that he does it without even thinking, just like an animal with rabies, he is violent without being provoked.

               “Young and old were hunted down by that dark death-shadow who lurked and swooped in the long nights.” This is another important part of the quote because it shows that his killing wasn’t restricted to any one type of person, it was extended to all age groups, and nobody was really safe. This went on to use the keening “death-shadow” to describe Grendel, which shows that the Danes viewed him as some sort of dark evil presence over all the people in Herot. The narrator also described the nights as long which makes me believe that nobody enjoyed the night time because of Grendel, it was a fearful time that everybody wanted to just get through.

               I found this quote to be important because it gives you a look at how and why the normal people of Herot viewed Grendel the way they do, which was an evil monster that had held their nights captive, and not just a warriors perspective which was that he was just another foe that needed to be defeated.