Monster's of Society

F D Lee 1
Dana Lee
Honors English 12
Mrs. Price
January 20, 2013 The Monsters of High School
Life of a teenager comes with a lot of obstacles. While society throws many obstacles to the youth of today, the biggest 'monsters' are the ones we as a person create ourselves. The anger that is projected from a person, greed, the pride, the jealousy, or even the constant need to be number one. Today's society struggles with the thought of being left behind - exiled if you will, it's even worse for the youth of society, fore they are the ones who are creating the future. Like the monsters in Beowulf we as society struggle with common issues, like the ones I mentioned earlier.
Grendel, a beast like individual who projects jealousy quiet often (1-4). He's constant sorrow of being exiled causes him to lash out and kill (35-39). We may not go as far to kill someone the way Grendel did, but we do kill people's self-esteem. Jealousy is a monster in its self. The thrive to be better than another boils inside of a person until said person acts on it. Rather than killing, like Grendel, young society tends to lower anther's self-esteem. The actions of Grendel are resulted into cowardly tendencies when Beowulf conquers the beast (390-395). Which proves that jealousy is a coward hidden behind a tough exterior.
In Beowulf's second battle he conquers Grendel's mother, who is described as a sea witch. The monster is pushed by anger of Beowulf killing her son. She lashes out and kills Hrothgar's closest friend. In society our anger is portrayed though our actions, though those
Butterworth 2 action may not be killing someone, we tend to be aggressive when anger takes over. The act of school shootings, robberies, fights, words of hate, these being just a few examples of societies monster of anger. Though at the end anger did not prevail, it was demolished with courage. Resulting in anger being brought on by someone of lower intelligence than an individual who refused to take part.
In the last battle Beowulf fights a dragon. The dragon is to protect treasures, Beowulf, old in age, takes a stand and challenges the monster. The greed that is our society today is overwhelming. We as a society thrives on the want instead of the need. We protect our belongs, like the dragon does with the treasure, but in the end we don't end up with what we protected. In the epic, Beowulf conquers, only to die for his brave deed. His cousin, stands beside him when his men did not, due to this the treasure was buried with Beowulf and no one ended up with what was originally protected.
The want to be number one is overwhelming and full of hidden agendas. The monster's of today are not much different of those in Beowulf. Though they aren't physical monster's they are portrayed in a manner of darkness that is unable to fully be defeated. The constant struggle society faces to defeat these said monster's, like Beowulf's need to defeat the monster's in the epic, are of the same, we spend our lives making a name of ourselves, but we end up know for the monster's that we tried to defeat.