Afternoon of Alterity - Nazareth College

modern readers are not part of the culture, and therefore cannotconstruct the proper islands of meaning to fully appreciate all ofBeowulf’s notions.In our evolution and construction of a modern society, it ispossible that we have taken two ideas and made synonyms of them.The two ideas worth examining are violence and crime. The link thatwe have placed in our modern minds has given both ideas a strangepretext. We view crime and violence as synonyms because both ofthem share space on an island of meaning. The issue is, crime andviolence also appear on several of the mind’s islands of meanings,in several different categories. Crime and violence even sit togetheron an island that we cheer for. Take the story of Robin Hood. Herobs from the rich and gives to the poor. It’s a story most of us growto appreciate as children and have a nostalgia for when we reachadulthood. But nostalgia aside, we also have a growing fear that oneday, we might be the rich being robbed. Feelings of nostalgia vanishas we think about being confronted by a man in a ski mask at anATM. For all we know, he is going to donate that money to charity,or maybe even give it to a medical institution as a grant. Regardlessof his intentions, once we are the rich (or at least the ones beingrobbed) any happy notion of armed robbery as “good” gets packedup and sent to the mental island of meaning labeled “bad.”From a modern perspective, it is very easy to conceptualizeBeowulf as a warmonger and a brute. This happens due to thebinary created between Beowulf and Grendel. Maybe it is becauseof our legal system or our distancing from violence as a societal tool.Nonetheless, we see violence as an irrational “other.” To show thistransformation of the idea, we can look at the 1971 novel: Grendel,by John Gardner. The novel is set as a prequel describing Grendel’schildhood and eventual coming of age. It also describes Grendel asan anxiety ridden teenager that is the victim of lateral violence andbanishment to the edge of society. The reader feels pity for Grendeldavid buisch 133