From: mdhangton@gmail.com   
      
   Dorothy J Heydt wrote:   
   > In article <309e9fb0-763a-4514-81c1-d4b56cdcd751@googlegroups.com>,   
   > Will in New Haven   wrote:   
   >> On Thursday, July 2, 2015 at 9:04:50 AM UTC-4, William Vetter wrote:   
   >>> Jim Hetley wrote:   
   >>>> On Thursday, July 2, 2015 at 6:59:06 AM UTC-4, William Vetter wrote:   
   >>>>   
   >>>>> I was thinking the other day that Grendel breaks into the mead hall at   
   >>>>> night to slaughter thanes because he is a monster, and when we are   
   >>>>> confronted with a monster, the reader wants the brutal Viking Beowulf.   
   >>>>> That is what we call storytelling, and what we call writing is when we   
   >>>>> give Beowulf a crippled wife and a hound with three legs; and we give   
   >>>>> Grendel a backstory in which his mother the witch molested him and fed   
   >>>>> him spoiled weasel meat.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> "Grendel" is a lost humanoid in GHOST POINT, wounded and hungry, dying in   
   >>>> a  Maine winter storm.  Beowulf rescues her . . .   
   >>>>   
   >>> I read a book once, named _American Assassin_, because I wanted to see   
   >>> what a NYT Bestseller was.  The title character was a   
   >>> swarthy-complexioned fellow who gads about Europe and systematically   
   >>> executes dodgy bankers who move money about for Islamic terrorists,   
   >>> with the idea of starving the terrorists of capital.  The protagonist   
   >>> was essentially a monster-killer, pretty much like a Viking.   
   >>>   
   >>> Another such book I read was _Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter_, in   
   >>> which Lincoln doesn't give a crap about Abolitionism or Black people,   
   >>> he only wants to wipe out CSA vampires by the strategy of freeing the   
   >>> slaves through denying the enemy their cattle.  Lincoln, about as   
   >>> complex a historical figure as one could want, is reduced to a Viking.   
   >>   
   >> Neither of those characters sounds at all like a Viking.   
   >   
   > Good point.  A Viking is a Norseman who lives on his farm most of   
   > the year, but once the crops are planted and he has nothing much   
   > to do till harvest time, outfits his ship, calls in his friends,   
   > and sails down the _vik_ (fjord) to raid, trade, or both.  At   
   > summer's end he goes home (assuming he doesn't get killed, or   
   > decides to settle elsewhere) and harvests the crops and settles   
   > in for the winter.   
   >   
   > A better description for Beowulf is "hero," unless you want to   
   > get into the stuff about the bear's son.   
      
   Beowulf is not burdened by Christian sensitivies.  He comes from a   
   brutal world, with few moral complications, and slays brutally.  His   
   world is only beginning to be penetrated by Christian ethics.  When   
   there is a monster to be slain, this is the character literature brings   
   out.  That is what I was trying to say.   
      
   There was a movie derived from this Lincoln novel, and the screenplay   
   was very different.  Lincoln has relationships with negroes in the   
   movie, and strives to liberate them from the vampires as much as he   
   wants to free anybody.  In the novel, he's rather contemptuous of   
   negroes, and only emancipates them as a strategic ploy.  He is   
   preoccupied with revenge and hatred of the supernatural beings.  He   
   just wants to kill as many of them as possible.  In this novel, he's no   
   deeper than that.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)