So, I brought up in class that I had found an article alluding to Ganelon as a Cain figure and I feel there’s an interesting type of othering going on between the Song of Roland and Beowulf. It is an othering that occurs in Christian context, but also proves a more dangerous adversary than that of the classic pagan – that is, the character of one who was originally a follower of Christianity and then turned away.
In “Cain as Convict and Convert? Cross Cultural logic in the Song of Roland” by Brewster E. Fitz, there is an assimilation to Ganelon with Judas and Cain. Ganelon is recognized as a Christian, but commits treason against his ‘brothers,” the Frank army. Ganelon has the ability to sin when he has all the potential for goodness, and this is seen Biblically by the actions of Cain and Judas. A person with an agency this strong is deemed as evil and creating offenses that can never be altered. In the same sense, Ganelon’s actions are unforgivable and destroy the strongest knight in Charlemagne’s army. In the article, Fitz calls Roland an imitatio christi (imitation of Christ) and that Ganelon’s rejection of Roland is also his rejection of Christianity (Fitz 817). I am not doing total justice to the article, but there is a lot of good information looking into the Cain story in relation to Ganelon and the Saracen army.
We see in several parts of Beowulf the depiction of Grendel as a descendant of Cain. The story provides a revised version of Genesis, where it is explained how the source of monsters comes to be from the lineage of Cain, the first murderer. Whenever the story of Cain arises the narrator exclaims how God rewarded that sin. In the Bible, Cain is forced to wander the earth with a mark (meant to warn others not to kill him). Placing Grendel in the Biblical lineage of Cain he is “marked” as an evil creature that kills without remorse. However, Cain was initially a human being loved by God. Cain was not born evil, but revered God and wanted to find favor with him. Cain chose to go against God and kill his brother. With this in mind, it would seem that Grendel had the opportunity to avoid evil. Though Grendel is depicted as a monster, he is not too monstrous, in fact, he is described as having a male form. Grendel’s being is actually human-like, save for his awesome strength, which can only be matched by Beowulf. We cannot make a claim to whether Grendel was at first Christian, but his association with Cain leads readers to question whether there was ever a turn from God. There are several places where Grendel is called demonic, which would sound like a clear refusal to Christianity.
We have spoken of pagans being those who are not Christians, but an even darker enemy is the people who have rejected Christianity. A prominent example of this can be found in Paradise Lost with the lines claiming that it is better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. Who’s a better example of rejecting God than Satan himself? Satan states in the story to remember that he also was once loved by God. The real enemy for the Christians isn’t simply pagans unaware of God, but those who knew full well of the Christian God and still persisted to denounce him.
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It may support your contention to note that what apparently outrages Grendel in the first place is precisely a song about how "the Almighty created the earth" (l. 92). While there is no explicit license to understand the scop in this scene as Christian (and that would fly in the face of the pagan practices on view elsewhere in the poem), the language throughout the summary of the scop's performance recalls that of other Old English verse that was explicitly Christian. And of course this is the same passage that leads into the identification of Cain as the first father of monsters.
The Hebrew for Satan mostly appropriately corresponds to the word "adversary." I feel that Grendel's link to Cain is meant to heighten this interpretation. While it is simpler to describe Grendel as "the ultimate bad guy" of the story, I do not believe that is really so. It seems that, Grendel serves to challenge the world of Heorot, turn it upside down, rather than destroy it outright. Grendel was not, as his mother later did, attack with a sense of purpose or plan. He had no specific enemy. Everyone was his enemy, and while he struck terror into many, his attacks had no specific mission. Satan is a calculated challenge to humanity while Cain is the unexpected maelstrom of life that does its damage and leaves. Grendel seems less like a character who is focused on a specific attack against God fearing people, and more of one who exists to remind people why they are God fearing in the first place.
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