He's only a tad bit innocent

I'm almost a little parts of me that wants to dislike Grendel because he is in fact a monster but then the other half is sad for him because he is just trying to fit in with the men so that maybe hell be apart of something. Grendel is obviously a monster who is not apart of the human world but rather threatens thems and terrorizes them. There was the time where he got his foot caught in between to the two tree trunks and that was where he first discovered man. In discovering man he seems that they and him are not that much different from each other in that they both speak the same language. What I'm confused about is whether or not Grendel is actually talking. We are reading his thoughts but we haven't actually heard hi, communicate. In the beginning when his foot gets stuck he tries to talk to them but they don't understand him or that he is trying it attack them or when he sees the dead man outside and he picks him up and throws him over his shoulder and runs into the meadhall and yells out" Mercy!Peace! Friend!" hes almost trying to ask for their forgivensee trying to connect with them but theynrejct him and think thatbhe is trying to attsck them.So then you begin to think that the whole story is just his thoughts, he has told us that he speaks the same language as the humans but then at the same time when he has tried to communicate with them it's not the same language . It is possible that he could just speak like his mother (she is always saying drool , drool) but thinks like the humans do. Which would make his mind very sophisticated. Then what confuses me even more is that when he is hiding in the forest and he talks about how Hrothgar has violence and shame etched into his face and Unferth is asleep but guarding the meadhall and he is just watching them then someone in the forest is asking who is there and he says " the Destroyer" it seems as if the priest can understand him and he can understand what Grendel is saying to him which makes no sense to me. I don't think that Grendel is necessarily evil, I think that he , like Adam and eve , has been influenced by evil to embrace his evil side. The evil side we all posess but must be pressured so that it comes out because before he was curious at the world and angry that was why he was attacking the meadhall but then he comes into his role after talking to the dragon and becomes "the Destroyer"

The red sweater

 For the prose timed writing essay that we had to write about the short story, Eleven. Elevwn is about a little girl in class who is unable to communicate with her teacher that a lost sweater isn’t hers. The sweater is really ugly and smells funny and the teacher is quite certain that it is hers until she is told otherwise. In the beginning the girl is reflective in that she thinks that as people age we don’t know the difference in each year as we get a little older. She goes on to mention how she is turning eleven but she doesn’t feel eleven. She also describes how even though we get older we still repeat actions from the years younger. She compares aging with an onion or the rings of a tree. Ad we grow older we start off in the very center of the tree and then we make our way outward but then an event or test will stop us from continuing outward and moving on to the next ring, but will in fact make us revert to the ring that we have already passed. Then the teacher comes to her table and tells her that the sweater is hers and the narrator says how because the teacher is older and she is only eleven that the teacher must be very wise. This goes along with the idea that as you do get older you are creating more rings on the tree, that represents your growth in age, but also provides more opportunity for you to revert back into your childhood. I looked at this prose through the prospective that this was an internal battle between maturity and childhood. The girl was trying to find her way to maturity by it being her birthday she figured that because there were no physical changes she would just have adult- like actions. This was  a failed test on her journey to maturity because the  red sweater was the test to prove that she would be able to handle the situation in a adult matter and continue on her journey to adulthood and have less moments where she would revert back into her childhood . The red sweater isn’t just a red sweater but it symbolizes the test that could potentially stop us from maturing. Once we have passed our red sweater then we may continue to explore the world while being on the road to maturity. Because the girl, whose name I think might be Rachel, failed the red sweater test and cried she had regressed back into her childhood making it seem that the journey of her maturity was almost nonexistent. She went back to the time where she was three and sat and cried in front of her class. So now she must start over and prep herself to find the road to maturity and begin again. This ending shows that when we, as people, fail our red sweater test we must start over again , kind of like going from that childhood moment and starting again.