An Evaluation of the Book Review Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics by J.R.R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien's review of Beowulf, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the critics" was extremely difficult to read and understand and retain. I have never had the desire to read his other works such as Lord of The Rings or The Hobbit, and now I understand why. Though I did catch the quote "It has been said of Beowulf itself that its weakness lies in placing the unimportant things at the centre and the important on the outer edge," (Tolkien 103) which is entirely true about Beowulf and in the real world. The epic focuses more on the outer parts, and not so much the main parts of the battles. It seemed like they went really fat while reading them. People also do this in the real world, and it sometimes gets them in extreme amount of trouble. I also got that Tolkien was talking about Beowulf as a two-part reading of him as a younger adult and then as an older adult. The second article however, was a much smoother and nicer read that I enjoyed. Jane Chance talks about how Grendel's mother kind of screws up the unity of the epic, saying "Her section, roughly 500 lines . . . is not as long as Grendel's, roughly 1100-1200 lines . .. or the dragon's, 1000 lines," (Chance 153) which on a basic level, is how Grendel's mother screws up the unity on a purely line basis. Chance then went in to talking about how Grendel's mother screwed up the unity by being 1. Woman and 2. Monster, "Her attempts to avenge her son's death could be justified if she were human and male," (Chance 159).
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I was really upset when I read this, because I thought about putting myself in Grendel's mother's situation, though I am not a monster, I am still female and the fact that according to Chance I would not be able to avenge my child's death based on that, brought out the side of me that fights for equal rights. It made me think 'why is this okay for a male human to do, but not a female monster, or even a female human'. I would even go as far to say that if it were Grendel's father, this would not be a problem to avenge his death, purely because he would be male. Chance then starts talking about just how monstrous Grendel's mother was by writing "For a mother to "avenge" her son (2121) as if she were a retainer, he were her lord, and avenging more important than peace-making, is monstrous," (Chance 159) though she then counter-acts herself and says "The efforts of the peacemaker, . .. ultimately must fail because of the nature of this world. True peace exists not in woman's ... 'embrace'." Why is it okay for peace to fall at the end, but not because Grendel's mother was sad, and enraged that her only (that we know of) son was killed? It's not. If peace is going to fall, peace is going to fall no matter what. This article really upset me because it kept bringing up the fact that Grendel and his mother were monsters, but Beowulf nor Chance ever defined what a monster was/is. For all the readers know, they could be humans that weren't as civilized as some, and didn't know how to be, because that's all they knew and were perceived as 'monstrous' simply because they didn't conform to the society's standards of that time period. Overall, I did like this article much more than the first one by J.R.R. Tolkien.
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An Evaluation of the Book Review Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics by J.R.R. Tolkien. (2023, May 03). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/an-evaluation-of-the-book-review-beowulf-the-monsters-and-the-critics-by-j-r-r-tolkien/
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