Have you ever watched a really bad horror movie where you know the acting is terrible, but you just cant seem to keep your eyes off of it? You know that the screaming girl is going to die eventually by the hands of that crazy man wielding the axe, but you just cant stop watching it because you want to see it actually happen. Movie writers producers, and directors know that even if they spend as little money on a movie as possible, they will still hold the attention of the masses if they put a little blood, action, and gore into the film. The idea is simple; increase the blood, guts, and action, and you don’t have to worry so much about the plot or heart of the story. An easy way to impress and hold the attention of the masses. These tactics are very similar to those in the story of Beowulf. Beowulf is a poem that was told by word of mouth in what could have been as early as the tenth century. In that age there probably weren’t a lot of educated people who could read a story like people can today. Bards, or poets would travel from place to place and tell stories to the townspeople as a form of entertainment in poetic form. It was probably very hard to hold the intere

The first major scene of action is when Beowulf goes to fight the monster named Grendel. Grendel has been attacking the mighty Heorot. He comes at night and slaughters all the men until he rules Heorot for himself. Right away it is learned that Grendel butchered the corpses and killed with no remorse. From the start the tale a very vivid picture is created about how brutal and mean Grendel really is. The account of his brutality is used to establish his character as a villain. After many years of this oppression, Beowulf hears of this monster and sets out to help the situation at Heorot. When he arrives, Beowulf and his men lay and wait late at night for Grendel to attack. Right away the Grendel “grabbed and mauled a man on his bench, bit into his bone-lappings, bolted down his blood, and gorged on him in lumps, leaving the body utterly lifeless, eaten up hand and foot.” This action creates some suspense right away that hooks the reader (or listener in olden times) and draws him or her in. Now that Grendel has killed one of Beowulf’s men, the reader knows that there is going to be a fight between them. The “sinews of Grendel’s shoulder splitting, and the bone-lappings bursting” highlight the next scene when they go at it in a fight to the death. This graphic depiction of Grendel’s arm literally being ripped from the socket shows that a little bit of gore and dismemberment holds the reader’s interest very well.

The last big graphic scene in Beowulf is his heroic fight with the dragon. As he fights the dragon, they exchange blows and the dragon bites his neck. Beowulf’s body is described as “wet with his life-blood”. This makes it very easy to picture a wounded warrior fighting to the death with a dragon. The use of detail makes the reader interested and entrapped in the fight, waiting to find out what is going to happen next. When Beowulf

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