YMMV / Beowulf

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Were Grendel and his mother truly these evil beings that needed to be slain or were they misunderstood creatures that were unfairly persecuted for their differences which lead to them acting monstrously?, or perhaps they were even necessary to keep humanity in check/maintain a balance in power which is why the pair were supernaturally invulnerable to weapons.
  • Considering there is no evidence to suggest that the dragon’s hoard was anything other than its rightful property or that it claimed it by harming anyone and how history is written by the victors. It seems odd that no one tried to appease the dragon by trying to return or replace the goblet the thief stole first before trying to kill it, whose to say the dragon didn’t ask for it back and only resorted to rampaging when it was refused by a bored and bloodthirsty king (Beowulf) who sought an excuse to take the rest of its treasure?
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Grendel is the kind of monster that kills warriors in their sleep, rips them to shreds, and eats them on the spot. Yet, a lot of adaptations, such as John Gardner's Grendel, the 2005 film Beowulf and Grendel, and the 2007 film, tend to portray Grendel sympathetically, despite the fact that in the poem, out of the three monsters, he's the one the narrator condemns the harshest and the most often.
  • Grendel's mother also gets this treatment, with some modern readers stating that she is merely avenging her son's death; Maria Dahvana Headley's translation aims to show this.
• First Installment Wins: The first portion of the story is the most familiar to the layman, including such well-known elements as Beowulf's having the strength of thirty men and ripping Grendel's arm off.
• Genre Turning Point: The Dragon may seem identical to pretty much every other dragon you've ever read about in a Standard Fantasy Setting, but that's actually because all those other dragons are based on this one (or rather they're based on Smaug, who is partly based on this dragon and partly on Fafnir).
• Ho Yay: In Seamus Heaney's translation, Hrothgar's farewell to Beowulf seems extremely... intimate.
• Nightmare Fuel: Grendel, who kills, dismembers and eats the people of the kingdom close to his marshy home all because their loud celebrations annoyed him. Later, Beowulf kills him by ripping his arm off.
• Signature Scene: Beowulf tearing off Grendel's arm is one of the most well-known moments in the story, demonstrating the titular character's strength and completing his first major quest in the story. Stock Shout-Outs to Beowulf often include this very scene.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: As mentioned in Values Dissonance, Grendel living a miserable life in the swamps for being a descendant of Cain and everyone having a better life than him comes off as sympathetic to modern readers.
• Values Dissonance:
  • To the Anglo-Saxons, Beowulf would be a perfect hero, representing all that the Anglo-Saxons stand for^note Even though he was a Geat and most likely a pagan in the original version. To modern readers, Beowulf can come off as a selfish, arrogant brute who perpetually seeks fame.
  • Although the text repeatedly conveys that Beowulf's defeat of Grendel was a noble act, the description of the scene is so bone-crunchingly brutal that it makes Beowulf look downright sadistic. You almost feel sorry for Grendel. This is part of the reason that more people are making Grendel a Draco in Leather Pants in modern times. The mere fact that Grendel is a descendant of Cain would've struck most Anglo-Saxons as reason enough for Grendel to be deserving of his miserable life in the swamp—to a modern reader, punishing someone for their ancestor's deeds just comes across as petty.
  • The men who do not come to Beowulf's aid in the fight against the dragon are dishonoured, and their male relatives condemned to shame and banishment.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Discussed in the making of Eaters of the Dead, which Michael Crichton wrote in response to a friend calling the story of Beowulf "a bore". Crichton argued that the story wasn't boring if it was presented in a way that resonated with modern audiences, just like the original resonated with early Medieval audiences.
• Woolseyism:
  • Seamus Heaney's translation. On the one hand, it was done by a Nobel Prize-winning poet, so it reads very well, to say the least. On the other hand, he took a lot of liberties with the text. For instance, the name "Scyld Scefing" is anglicized/modernized to "Shield Sheafson", and instead of having Scyld "seize" or "take" the "mead-benches" (feasting/drinking benches, possibly symbolic for entire halls) of enemy tribes, he goes further and "wrecks" their furniture. Needless to say, there's a Broken Base on this one.
  • Since both Scyld's son and our hero who lives after him are both called "Beowulf" in the original text, it's become common practice in translations to give the former's name as "Beow", ever since scholars such as J. R. R. Tolkien proposed that the first instance of "Beowulf" was a scribal error (the names have distinct meanings).
• The Woobie: Poor, poor Hrothgar. You just want to build the next wonder of the world, and for years to come a monster is feasting on your men, and you know you can't do anything about it. When you finally get rid of the monster, another one comes and kills one of your best warriors. When that one is taken care of, you're so grateful towards the hero that did it that you hope to meet him again, but know that you won't because you're dying, and after you're dead, your prized hall is destroyed and your nephew, who you hope to watch over your sons, ends up killing them. Hrothgar's life sucks.

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