The second tale that I found worth mentioning from the Beowulf unit was the story named "Seeking Grendel's Mother." This story had Beowulf and his group of warriors in hot pursuit of the terrifying mother of Grendel. Grendel was a monster from the first half of the unit that was a giant and had the ability to put all people within a certain range into a sleep from which they could not easily wake. Beowulf was the only one able to fight off this sleeping spell and was able to fight Grendel. Unfortunately, when Grendel returned back to his cave, his mother wanted revenge for the damage Beowulf had inflicted upon Grendel. So she went on a rampage in the hall and stole back Grendel's arm. Beowulf followed her trail all the way to an evil looking lake. Here, he departed from the rest of his comrades and decided to embark into the pool of liquid on his own. On his way down, he found a multitude of weird deep sea monsters that eerily watched him. Throughout his descent, Beowulf had to fight off many of these creatures before he finally made it to the cave where Grendel's mother lived.
The setting of this part of the tale is through the woods to the lake and down into the lake. The writer of this story did a beautiful job of creating an eerie atmosphere that Beowulf had to face when he decided to go into the lake. Each sea creature is new and different from the rest. I appreciated the phrase, "evil glance from its glowing eyes of red or green or sapphire blue," as this showed me what Beowulf was seeing. I imagined dark nothingness fully surrounding Beowulf, but in the midst of everything, I could see glowing orbs of various colors watching Beowulf in the deep water. Being able to visualize something like this shows that I was able to get fully into the words of this tale which is why I think it was successful.
Bibliography
Seeking Grendel's Mother, The Story of Beowulf by Strafford Riggs with illustrations by Henry
Image Information: Deep sea fish, Pixabay
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