The Need for Humanity

In modern culture there's this need for gray areas. We have to view things from both the perspective of the hero and the villain. Nowadays most people are unwilling to accept this concept of pure evil. The book Grendel is a perfect example of this. In the book Beowulf Grendel is presented as an evil villain with basically no redeeming qualities. On the other hand in Grendel he's presented more as just misunderstood. He's a bad person of course, but he's not completely evil or totally irredeemable. It's more his circumstances than his character that drives him to evil deeds. This version of Grendel is more relatable and contrasts sharply with the killing machine from Beowulf. These two completely different versions show the differences in the cultures that produced them. In the old days most things were black and white. You had the hero as the good guy and the villain was just evil. Also good almost always triumphed over evil. Take old Westerns for example, the good guy wore a white hat while the villain always wore a black hat. Now in our culture it's not always as clear. Sometimes the good guys become bad guys like Darth Vader for example. On the other hand there are certain times where it turns out that the villain was the hero the whole time. Then there are stories where the lines between the hero and villain are blurred. For example Pirates of the Caribbean. Most of the characters in the series traded roles all the time. Sometimes they were heroes and sometimes not. Even Jack Sparrow wasn’t always the hero. Most of his actions were done for selfish reasons. There are some antagonists that are just as, if not more, likable than the heroes like Loki from the Avengers. He was clearly the bad guy yet he's a lot of people's favorite character from that movie. People are more open minded these days. Being able to look at things from a different perspective has become an important skill in our society. It helps us understand and learn from other people. It's things like this that show us how far we've come.