Why Are There Monsters?
Spoiler alert — I have no answer to that question. No one does. Sometimes we can’t even agree on who the monsters are. But setting aside the existential question, the reality is that they can come crashing into our lives at any time.
Just ask the great hero Beowulf...
Beowulf understood that there are two kinds of monsters — the ones who present themselves that way, and the ones you don’t realize are monsters until it’s too late.
The great epic poem about Beowulf is bookended by his battles with monsters.
As a young man, he tears the arm off the monster Grendel, hunts him down and chops off his head, then plunges to the depths of a swamp to kill Grendel’s troll of a mother. At the end of his life, an old king deserted by all his followers, he fights the dragon that has been ravaging his people. They both die.
In between, Beowulf is quick to understand — when no one else seems to — the cowardice of Unferth, sick with envy; or the villainy of Hrolf Kraki, already sizing up his young cousins for coffins; or the greed of Eadgils, king in pursuit of a throne he doesn’t deserve. Beowulf knows, they are monsters who attack from within.
It makes for a lonely life, always being the one who takes on the monsters, but that’s the burden a true hero will shoulder.
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Painting: Yoann Lossel ("The Fight with Grendel")
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