Originally written in Old English, Beowulf, as translated by Seamus Heaney, records the Viking culture as one defined by authoritarian morality, bravery, and brutality regarding how we confront evil. The valor displayed by characters in the poem is admirable. And it’s easy to understand our draw toward utilizing Beowulf as a guide for functioning societies throughout history—the very human pull toward order, strong leaders, and effective clans.

Posed against this centuries-old visionary civilization, however, it becomes intensely clear how flawed the systems are we work so hard to maintain today. Face to face with the incarceration system in America—the way we in modern times deal with “evil”—it is evident that the lack of reform and disregard for systemic issues is a problem obscured by our equally misguided “solution” of reactionary imprisonment. 

Read “History Isn’t Made by Great Men”

Life Is Messier Than Literature

Within the pages of fiction, every evil action has its equal, opposite, and just reaction. At first glance, the side of good is also (conveniently) the side on top by the end. Against the monster Grendel, a manifestation of evil itself, and later Grendel’s mother, the Geatish Beowulf is the sole warrior powerful enough to regain order. Beowulf ultimately ascends to kingship before dying in battle with a dragon, succumbing to fate and old age.

It all makes sense; indiscriminate good fights complete and total evil.

However, in a reality where coping with evil is an impossibly elusive idea, a more modern and, perhaps, cynical view sees the poem more as a grim warning. Our reality is not as cut and dry as Beowulf’s, no one person or group exactly evil, and no one warrior ready to solve or slaughter another in the name of justice. Literature can be a mirror of sorts but is rarely a perfectly reflective source when acknowledging the real-life systems we all engage with.

We don’t, after all, exist in a 256-word vacuum like our hero Beowulf does. One must consider if when participating in a nuanced and multifaceted society, the current confrontation of societal evils is adequate and if it is even possible to act against malevolence justly.

Read “On the Something There Is”

Fate Sealed Since Birth

Through Grendel’s introduction, the author initially posits that maybe the evil further manifesting itself as a true problem is in some sense containable.

While his intrinsic malevolence is mentioned, Grendel’s status as an outsider is of the utmost importance. He is introduced as an interloper in the world at large, a descendent of Cain, and, above all, an outcast. From this line alone, it’s clear that Grendel’s fate has been sealed since birth. His being is synonymous with evil, this “othering” is framed as a just punishment created by their God, and the crime he is punished for is itself merely the misfortune of being born a monster.

Seeing as Heaney’s Beowulf is a poem heavily influenced by Christian ideals, this doesn’t only mean that Grendel is rightly othered by the clans themselves, but more importantly, by the almighty God they all worship.

Because of the supposed evil innate to Grendel’s being as seen through his oppositional stance to God and all things “good,” both textually and religiously, Grendel’s unfortunate treatment before he even physically appears in the poem is seemingly “right.” Further, the dragon is also posed against the Christian moral code, standing against Beowulf’s blessed nature. In both these instances, the framing confirms the idea that society as a whole must accept that while dangers like Grendel can be viewed sympathetically, there is a necessity to serve and protect vulnerable people.

As harsh as it may be, it’s difficult to truly understand, much less empathize with the situation of someone deemed a threat; our instinct for self-preservation is a strong one and salmon don’t empathize with bears. Through the religious justness associated with the othering of monsters comes an assertion that in the case of inherent evil forces, the “right” thing to do is to exchange the freedom of the dangerous for the guaranteed safety of the many.

This initial action—the othering—is explicitly reminiscent of the first step in dealing with criminals today in the real world: incarceration.

The most common way to punish crimes, from drug possession to robberies in the US, is imprisonment. Just as monsters and dangers in the society of Beowulf’s time ought to be outcasted for the good of the many, dangerous people in America are similarly put away, punished, and ignored for the supposed greater good. But unlike the text, people, in reality, are not merely dangerous, but instead hold nuance and the propensity for change.

Even in Beowulf, while each monster from Grendel to the dragon is initially outcast, recalling the idea of protection and punishment, the central tension comes from the fact that this othering does not prevent danger and may even add fuel to it.

For all the monsters being exiled, strikingly little of the status quo ever changes. The danger itself is at best put off. We see through descriptions of Grendel’s perspective that while to the Danes, an unbalanced and uncalled-for ambush is occurring, to Grendel, he is merely fighting back in a war, defending himself after years of exile and loneliness. Yes, outcasting him may have prevented immediate danger for a time, but this also means that perhaps Grendel’s seemingly abrupt violence towards the Danes, though not justifiable, is understandable.

Read “The Opposable Thumb at the End of the Imagination”

Deterrence Doesn’t Work

The system in place both fictionally and in reality values incarceration over rehabilitation and the understanding of circumstances that breed criminals. When applied to the real world—one that does not have the same innate evil-doers and instead is home to criminals of circumstance—maybe the system in place is intrinsically more broken than expected.

With this in mind, Professor Ashley Rubin, a sociologist specializing in US prison history at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, argues that “[i]f deterrence worked well for crime reduction, we would have more evidence that it works, but we only have weak and mixed evidence. If you want to prevent crime, you have to intervene before the crime happens.”

Upon following this logic to its end, a gaping hole can be found in our institutions: if imprisoning all threats will lead to a safer society over time, why is that not true?

In Beowulf, this fundamental issue is evident in the recurrent nature of danger in the poem. While many classic fairy tales follow a structure featuring a climax where tension is highest and then resolved, Beowulf subverts this expectation, instead offering multiple major threats to the central characters and ending not in peace but with lingering danger approaching.

In his final battle, the distinct and resigned tonal shift punctuates the realization that for the first time in his life, Beowulf is “denied by” fate. Sure, Beowulf himself eliminates countless threats, but with each conquered villain, a new and more severe threat always seems to appear, leaving his clan to deal with seemingly unavoidable doom after his death. This time, the moral framing of the battle questions the decisions in Beowulf’s life. Even fate, an extension of spiritual beliefs of the time, is now oppositional to Beowulf’s goals, hinting that his actions, while effective in the short term, are both unsustainable and unjust.

Read “Your Job and Cancer Are Nothing”

Criminals Are a Tragic Effect of the System

At the end of the story, Beowulf is no longer perceived as righteously as before. His last wish is to greedily see his gold. A raven, death’s personification, gloats over his death. The narrative seems to reduce this once-great leader and figurehead into a whimpering and rapacious fool. As we observe the changing sentiment toward the central character, so comes a changing sentiment toward the system he leads.

Narratively, Beowulf’s death is linked to the fall of the outcasting and slaughtering system that had in the past protected the Geats. In an age where war is constantly threatened, societies can no longer effectively shun and outcast those who don’t conform. Beowulf at first proposes that the only choice available is—in a very literal sense—to get rid of the outcasts, and yet, by his death, it’s clear that this “solution” is more of a camouflaged appeal to ignoring the issue; even if the othering works and even if the slaughtering of evil is possible, it’s unquestionably not sustainable and merely helps to disguise the problem from the protected many.

This internal root issue is expansive and forces the initial idea of fictional black-and-white absolutism to shift; by the end of the story, with Beowulf’s morality in question, no longer is this cut-and-dry mindset possible. Exacerbated by the distinct inability to identify evil in reality and the moral gray area that contains the concept of rehabilitation and the origins of the evil itself, Beowulf increasingly parallels our reality.

It becomes unavoidable for us as readers to ignore the need for reform of the real-life institutions that shape our legal system.

Still, we cannot minimize the fundamental struggle of reform, the complete and radical structural changes that would be necessary. We must be able to turn away from the attractive and easy desire to frame criminals as the problem and, instead, view them more as the tragic effect of unjust systems. In attempting to enact change, we are not only reimagining a world free from the vilification of criminals but are also engaging in a battle against these exact oppressive structures that have every reason to pin blame on said criminals.

Read “American Democracy and Its Broken Bargaining Tables”

The True Face of ‘Evil’

Beowulf’s reign is characterized by heroism, and without the accepted fact that the criminal (monster) is evil, his legitimacy itself is called into question. Likewise, the prison-industrial complex, a term based on the countless connections between the incarceration system and corporate gain, stands only to benefit from the framing of criminals as the sole problem. Again, across fiction and reality, by creating a scapegoat out of individual criminals, the more insidious system that breeds, or at least feeds, the growth of criminals, can avoid closer inspection.

This is revealed explicitly in the depiction of Grendel’s mother; she sharply breaks free from the female stereotypes present in the poem and instead is viewed in connection to Hell, oppositional to the religious justness we earlier discussed. However, in spite of her evil, her first descriptor as an “avenger” is not one of danger, but instead humanizes her. What’s more human and noble in the Viking code than protecting and avenging one’s family?

Through this single admittance of her motivations, the system is questioned just as it was when Grendel was allowed to be a lonely soldier rather than merely a spawn of Cain. Readers today are forced to peek through the cracks ingrained in Beowulf’s confrontation of malevolence.

Though there may always be truly “evil” exceptions, to consider any individual threat the problem and not a consequence would be creating a strawman.

By humanizing and compelling one to empathize with the antagonist without disregarding the extent of crimes or culpability of the incarcerated, it’s abundantly clear that holding space for reform and rehabilitation does not minimize the need for prevention and punishment.

As easily as the society depicted in Beowulf has accepted continuous violence in search of protection from evil, our society has resigned itself to a reactionary prison system rather than one that “reforms education, universal basic income, childcare, shoring up health care, [and] early childhood nutrition,” as Greg Miller proposes, to indirectly and preventatively lower crime as a whole.

If there’s anything to glean from Beowulf, it’s that acting out of fear rather than with intentional empathy, is dangerous, too. Villainizing some and victimizing others does nothing to enact the change our systems desperately need either. In the end, Beowulf serves as a fantastical mirror of the current climate regarding criminal confrontational systems, reminding us who the true enemy is in the face of systemic oppression.