Beowulf or Grendel?

Beowulf is your basic hero story, involving a buff dude with a cool superpower who goes on adventures to vanquish demons and monsters. The first monster he vanquishes is this super ugly, horrible monster named Grendel, who, according to the book, had terrorized the clan for years for no apparent reason, killing a bunch of men in the night. Readers would most definitely root for Beowulf and cheer when Grendel gets killed. But then the short story "Grendel" appears. It makes you feel like crap. Reading the same adventure tale through Grendel's eyes and seeing and hearing and feeling things like Grendel gives you a whole new perspective and teaches you never to judge a book by it's cover. These events remind me of the perception of celebrities through media. Jennifer Lawrence, the quirky, lovable actress made recently popular through movies, had a bit of a downfall. A photo of Jennifer, posted at a time when she was very new in the industry, was critiqued by a news website, mocking her curvy figure. Jennifer was astonished at the amount of photoshop and editing done to her photograph and wanted it to be unedited. Society saw her as nothing more than a "fat" celebrity. But over time, Jennifer became a role model for young girls, and the media realized how fun, outgoing and substantial she was, a total opposite of the negative take the media had on her in the beginning. Personally, I enjoyed the story "Grendel" more than I enjoyed Beowulf. I loved how we got to know how things happened through  the antagonists eyes, and see them become the protagonist of their own story. Comparing the two stories, I think it teaches a great moral, one that we hear all the time: never judge a book by its cover. Every person has their own story, and we should give them a chance before judging them. In every Grendel, there could be a Beowulf.