Who is the monster: Beowulf or Grendel? My first impression of Beowulf was that of an enigmatic, somewhat esoteric work, a necessary evil on the path to reading the most important works. After a closer reading of the much celebrated epic, I had a revelation. And what a revelation: Beowulf is wonderful! Maybe it was the translation, or maybe it was the basic substance of the work itself, but I found myself devouring the poem. I discovered two specific areas of interest: 1) the fundamental attraction of the superhero archetype, and 2) the more contemporary trend in modern culture to attempt to recapture the experience of this particular era through popular fiction and cinema. The hero ideal is a concept so thoroughly integrated into the human psyche that it is practically incorporated. From Homer's Ulysses to Nietzsche's Ubermensch, we as a race of beings are fixated on the individual who makes things happen, who gets them done, preferably with a healthy dose of bravado. Perhaps this is attributable to an innate sense of vulnerability in each of us, that eerie little voice that whispers to us that, despite our best efforts, we have overlooked some crucial factors that will lead to our ultimate demise. The hero does not have these insecurities: he is invincible! Interestingly, not only has the figure of the hero continued to thrive in the collective human consciousness, but, in our Western culture, the Beowulf prototype has come full circle: there is an entire genre of fantasy novels centered on one form or another. another of the Anglo-Saxon warrior tradition, as well as a veritable plethora of films. Fleet upon fleet of ring-prowed ships sail uninterruptedly in the seas of our imagination, on th...... half of the paper ...... they enlarge the characters, making them more whole, more three-dimensional. Looking at the two works side by side, a question arises: who is the real monster? Fans of Beowulf will claim, no doubt, that their hero is the undisputed good guy and that Grendel was an evil bastard who got what he deserved. But Gardner's perspective offers an interesting twist: Beowulf was crazy! An unbalanced, obsessive weirdo who babbles bizarre gibberish into Grendel's ear as he detaches the unfortunate creature's arm from his torso. This last interpretation is not as far-fetched as one might think; the police departments of every major city in this country contain a number of these so-called "heroes," men so mired in violence that their perceptions become distorted, who ultimately become the very thing they fought so hard to defeat.