Lesson video

Hi everyone, and welcome to lesson five of Epic Poetry with me, Miss Kuhivchak.

This lesson, we're going to look at the depiction of Grendel the monster.

Last lesson, we looked at the character of Beowulf, and looked to how he was presented as an Epic hero.

In this lesson, we're going to look at how Epic poetry presents a villainous characters, and also look at the language that the poet uses to do it.

I hope you're ready to learn, and I hope you enjoy.

For this lesson, you'll need three things.

You need a pen or a pencil, something to write on and your brain.

Now, usually I would say the lesson will work, even if you don't have a pen and pencil and a piece of paper, but there is a drawing activity at the end that you might like to do.

So if you can pause the video, go and get something to write with, and a piece of paper and make sure your brain is switched on.

I'm going to take you through today's agenda.

First, we're going to talk about what makes an Epic villain, since we've already talked about what makes an Epic hero.

Then we're going to discuss where the character of Grendel comes from and how he's described.

And finally, I'd like you at the end of the lesson to create your own Grendel, and I'll explain a little bit more about that at the end.

Finally, as usual, there'll be a small quiz for you to review, all the learning that you've done today.

So, what makes an Epic villain? Now by villain, we usually mean, what is sometimes called the antagonist.

An opposite character to our hero, who is there to make his life difficult.

I'm sure you can think of movies and books, where the hero or heroine in the book has had some kind of enemy, who's always there to throw at them and get in their way.

That's a villain.

And an Epic poem always has a villain of some kind, waiting there, to get in the way.

We have already thought about the qualities of an Epic hero.

And now I'd just like you to take a moment to brainstorm or bullet point.

What do you think an Epic villain should be like? Pause the slides and have a go.

Now, these might be some of the ideas that you thought of.

Don't worry if you didn't get to everything, you might have got some ideas that I didn't have either.

The first thing that makes me Epic villain is of course, somebody who's strong.

You need a sword to be strong villainous character, to be a worthy opponent to your hero.

There's no glory, in defeating a character who's weak.

So a villain has got to have some kind of strength to be worthy of defeating.

Along with that, your villain has got to be intelligent.

There's no glory in defeating a stupid character.

In fact, sometimes the intelligence of the villain is what makes it dangerous.

Therefore, a character with some kind of plotting or cunning personality is to be feared more than something that's just brutally strong.

And of course you might not always know the identity of the villain straight away.

They might have some kind of mysterious identity, or some kind of hidden background that get reveals, get revealed later in the narrative.

Funnily enough, similar to the Epic hero, an Epic villain usually has some kind of flaw, and it might be similar to the flaw that the hero has.

They might be boastful.

They might have a temper.

But, this flaw usually will be their downfall by the end of the narrative.

Finally, they'll have some kind of horrid appearance.

They're very likely not to look human.

They might be monstrous or ugly in some way.

And this is designed to make them even more terrifying as an opponent to Epic hero.

So to sum up, an Epic villain in needs physical and mental strength, in order to be worthy of fighting.

Often he or it, needs some kind of mysterious identity.

There will be some kind of flaw or imperfection, that needs to its downfall, such as a temper or boastfulness.

He's got to be cunning and intelligent, and also have some kind of monstrous appearance.

Now all of these things apply to our character of Grendel.

Grendel, interestingly is not given a lot of description in the Epic poem.

It's almost as if the poet thinks that it's more mysterious and frightening, if we don't hear a lot about how this creature looks.

However, we do get some details about what he looks like.

And on the screen, you can see a short extract describing what happens when he appears at the mead hall.

We get a description, not only of how he moves and a little bit of what he looks like, but particularly the kind of mood he's in.

We're going to think about the key ideas that the poet has shown with us about Grendel.

First, I'm going to take you through some vocabulary that you may be unfamiliar with, and that will help you to understand what's happening.

Grendel is described, interestingly as condemned, which means already fated for death or sentenced.

We are told his rage-inflamed, meaning angry.

He's also wreckage-bent, meaning going to destroy things.

And the soldiers in the poem are described as being a group, a host.

Finally, one of the most important adjectives describing Grendel is the fact that he is gluttonous or greedy.

Now in the scene, this is very typical of Grendel.

It's night time in the mead hall.

The soldiers are all asleep, and he's hungry.

And he approaches the hall with a plan to get his dinner.

And you'll be able to work out from the end of this extract, what his dinner is going to be.

Walking to the hall came this warlike creature, condemned to agony.

The door gave way, toughened with iron, at the touch of those hands.

Rage-inflamed, wreckage-bent, he ripped open the jaws of the hall.

Hastening on, the foe then stepped onto the unstained floor, angrily advanced.

Out of his eyes stood in unlovely light, like that of fire.

He saw then in the hall, a host of young soldiers, a company of kinsmen caught away in sleep, a whole warrior-band.

In his heart, he laughed then, horrible monster, his hopes swelling to a gluttonous meal.

Now, I'd like you to look at some of the key ideas here about Grendel.

And you might think about the ideas we've already discussed about what an Epic villain is like.

Pause the video and see if you can pull out any key words, phrases, or ideas from the passage.

Now I'm going to talk you through some of the ideas that I had.

They might not be the same as yours, and that's absolutely fine.

You may have some different ideas to me.

I'm just going to talk about the ones that to me, seem to most obvious.

The first thing is the idea that Grendel was rage-inflamed.

The poet is telling us that Grendel's already in a bad mood.

And we've talked about how in poems, Epic villains often have some kind of flaw.

Grendel is poorly a bad tempered monster, and he's not able to control his emotions, which is probably part of the problem when he comes up against Beowulf later in the poem.

He also, even though physically, we don't hear much about him, is described as having eyes that glow with a light like that of fire.

That gives us a sense that he's evil, almost devilish.

Now we don't get told much about his general appearance, about whether he's got scales or whether he's got a tan or whether he's got claws.

And in some ways that makes him even more frightening, because eyes are an important part of a character.

They are sometimes called the windows to the soul.

And Grendel, with eyes glowing it makes him sound perhaps a bit like a dragon or something that has come from hell.

And none of those things are things you want in your mead hall, in the middle of the night.

Another thing you might have picked out, is the fact that he's going to eat the men.

He's not turning up to the hall to share the dinner.

The men in the hall are his dinner.

This is what makes Grendel's character so frightening, and so revolting.

He's gluttonous, which means one of the men isn't enough.

He intends to eat hundreds of them.

And it's something that he does night after night.

All of those things make him a villain from an Epic poem.

There's something supernatural about him.

He's dangerous, he's violent and he's clever.

Now you might have picked out some other things from this passage.

You might have noticed that of course he described as being angry, he angrily advanced, and the fact that he opens the doors, which are described as being toughened with iron.

So that tells us that Grendel has some kind of superhuman strength.

Even iron doors aren't enough to keep him out.

I rule Grendel is clearly presented as a Epic villain worthy of a folk like Beowulf.

Now using these ideas, I want you to fill out the table, which you will have attached with this lesson.

You've got the extract to the poem on the screen in front of you.

Now the table asks you to look for quotations describing Grendel and explain what they mean.

This would be a good point to pause, and look at the sheet.

You have what, how and why.

What statements about Grendel's character? How is the evidence, the quotations, that show what he's like.

And the why is an explanation of what this means.

To help you, I put in half the quotations already, and I've left some blanks for you to fill in.

Pause the video about this point, find the quotations, and then have a go at explaining what you think they mean.

Okay, now these are my suggestions for what you could have put in the table.

In the first column it says, Grendel is presented as aggressive.

And we know this because he's described as a warlike creature, which suggests that he's dangerous and violent.

If he's warlike, he's ready to have, we covered on destruction.

And it doesn't sound like he's being able to be reasoned with either.

Following on from that, we've said the poet shows he's destructive with the description of him as being wreckage-bent, which gives us the impression he's ready to destroy anything and everything to get what he wants.

After all, we saw that he easily destroys tough iron doors in order to get inside of the mead hall.

We also have the point about Grendel being angry, because he described as rage-inflamed, which makes us think he's got a bad temper and he's easily angered.

After all, nothing has happened yet to make him angry, apart from the fact that he's hungry.

Though, you may well know people who get angry when they're hungry, but still that's not an excuse to kill and eat people.

And finally, on that note, the poet suggests he wants to eat the soldiers because we have the description of his hopes, swelling to a gluttonous meal.

Which tells us he's greedy and wants to feast on the humans.

And it also implies that one human isn't enough.

If he's greedy, he's going to eat more and more and he won't be stopped.

Well done, filling that in, and don't worry if your answers aren't the same as mine.

This was just a way of getting you to look carefully at the poem, and thinking more detail about its character.

Your next task is a visual task.

I'd like you to pull out up to four quotations from the section of the poem that we've read together and use them as labels on an image.

Now that could be an image that is already made for you.

On your worksheet, you'll see that I have put an image already.

You can use that image or colour it in if you like.

However, you could also use your imagination, and draw your own version of Grendel.

For some inspiration I've highlighted, the key words and phrases describing him, so that you can use them on your drawing.

You'll use them with arrows around the outside and remember to put them in quotation marks.

You can spend as long as you want on this exercise.

And I really hope that you enjoy it and that you really think in detail about how he might look.

You are very welcome of course, to share your drawings later, and I'll talking about how we do that later.

It should look something like this.

I put four quotations up.

Rage-inflamed, light like fire, horrible monster and warlike creature.

Now you don't have to use those quotations.

As you can see, there are many more here for you to choose.

So pause the slide, and have a go, at doing an image, or colouring the image, and labelling it with appropriate quotations.

Next lesson, we're going to look in more detail at the language that Anglo-Saxon Epic poets would use, to make their more effective.

In particular, we're going to look at some of the poetic techniques, that they would use, and how they use to describe the characters such as Grendel, and Beowulf.

To recap everything we've done today, we've gone over what makes an Epic villain, in some way is quite similar to what makes an Epic hero.

We've talked about Grendel's character, and how he's described in the poem.

And you also have the chance to create your own Grendel.

At the end of this, as usual, there'll be a small quiz for you to review, what you've learned.

Now, if you'd like to, please take a picture of your work, ask a parent or carer to share it with your teachers, so they can see all the fantastic learning that you've done.

And if you'd like ask your parent or carer to share it with Oak National on Twitter, so I can see all of your fantastic Grendel's as well.

Thank you for listening.

I hope you enjoy today's lesson, and I'll see you next time.