Grendel

He is also described as a descendant of the Biblical Cain and "a creature of darkness, exiled from happiness and accursed of God, the destroyer and devourer of our human kind.

[2] Grendel, being cursed as the descendant of the Biblical Cain, along with elves and other eotens, is "harrowed" by the sounds of singing that come every night from the mead hall of Heorot built by King Hroðgar.

[5] J. R. R. Tolkien (1936) argues for the importance of Grendel's role in the poem as an "eminently suitable beginning" that sets the stage for Beowulf's fight with the dragon: "Triumph over the lesser and more nearly human is cancelled by defeat before the older and more elemental."

Tolkien argues that "the evil spirits took visible shape" in the characters of Grendel and the dragon; however, the author's concern is focused on Beowulf.

Indeed, because his exact appearance is never directly described in Old English by the original Beowulf poet, part of the debate revolves around what is known, namely his descent from the biblical Cain (the first murderer in the Bible).

Grendel is called a sceadugenga – "shadow walker", in other words "night goer" – given that the monster was repeatedly described to be in the shroud of darkness.

[18] While jötnar in Old Norse accounts are highly diverse, lacking a single physical appearance, and best thought of as a social grouping, some broadly shared traits have been identified such as living on the periphery of the world, outside society.

[19][20] In both Old Norse and Old English accounts, these borders between the realms of humanity and those of supernatural beings are often marked by water, such as rivers or the surface of lakes.

The tale of Agnar tells how he was cut in half by the warrior Bödvar Bjarki (Warlike little Bear), and how he died "with his lips separated into a smile".

One major parallel between Agnar and Grendel would thus be that the monster of the poem has a name perhaps composed of a combination of the words gren and daelan.

[26] Other scholars such as Sherman Kuhn (1979) have questioned Grendel's description as a monster, stating: There are five disputed instances of āglǣca [three of which are in Beowulf, lines] 649, 1269, 1512 ...