Character Analysis
Killing Me Softly with His Song
For an old blind guy who sits around the meadhall playing on a harp all night, the Shaper sure wreaks a lot of havoc in Grendel's life. If you think about it, though, it makes a lot of sense. The Shaper is not just an entertainer—he's a twister of words.
Wait, what?
Hear us out: In Beowulf, the scop or Shaper "wordum wrixlan"—that is, he weaves or exchanges words. So on one hand, he's literally making a beautiful, artistic artifact with his words (essentially song lyrics). On the other hand, he's taking history and making it into whatever will please his patron (Hrothgar)—whether it's historically accurate or not.
Basically, the Shaper writes (or rewrites) history, but he's doing it at a time when nobody could, you know, verify any of the information. A good Shaper can create anything; he can even tell total lies. Once he's twisted those words and told what he wants to tell, the story becomes legit, whether it's true or not.
It's the "twisting of words" that bothers Grendel so very much. He can't help but be seduced by the beauty of the whole process. (Think of the Shaper as a popular front man with, like, twenty top ten songs under his belt.) But the artistry of the Shaper comes at a pretty steep price for Grendel:
My heart was light with Hrothgar's goodness, and leaden with grief at my own bloodthirsty ways. I backed away, crablike, further into the darkness—like a crab retreating in pain when you strike two stones at the mouth of his underwater den. I backed away till the honeysweet lure of the harp no longer mocked me. Yet even now my mind was tormented by images. (48)
Grendel loses any peace of mind he might have had the moment he hears the Shaper's version of history. And that is precisely what makes the Shaper so dangerous to him.
The Wrong Side of History
Most of what the Shaper says shines a bad light on Grendel, and some of it is just an outright lie. Or is it? Because Grendel has no one to talk to and no sense of his own history or identity, he has to piece it together wherever he can find it. His resources? Well, he has the Shaper, who clearly favors mankind despite some pretty clear evidence that they aren't so fantastic. And then he has the dragon.
Ugh. Talk about a lame set of choices.
The Shaper's poetry is way more attractive, but if it's true, his existence is hateful.
Inner Light?
It's no accident that our Shaper is blind. In the world of lit and myth, blindness is often interpreted as a kind of privilege and benefit for a poet. Sound a bit crazy? Consider other poets and prophets like Tiresias, Homer, or Milton: they supposedly have a kind of inner vision giving them wisdom that can't be found in the physical world.
Thus, the Shaper's blindness might signal a whole other level of insight not available to regular humans. But, ironically, it might also be symbolic of something else: the blindness of humanity. The Preserver of Human History (i.e. the Shaper) literally can't see any connection between mankind and Grendel. It's a missed opportunity and a bad sign that even the most "far-seeing" human can't put it all together.
The Shaper's Timeline