Evil is not a problem in life, it is a condition of living. Evil is a representation of how unachievable perfection is. Crime, violence, and other forms of evil are present so that absolute perfection is never reached. Perfection for Grendel would be peaceful nights lacking the noise of drunken warriors, but the warriors will always drink and yell at night. It all starts in the beginning, humans are born imperfect whether it is a mental defect or a weakness some never have the chance of being close to perfection to begin with. Evil is not always pure and intended, a common person can decide to drink, drive, and take a life by complete accident. Is that not evil? I believe evil is when someone severely hurts someone else in a way that will change them forever.
Evil is explained and dictated by a human’s free will. The ability to make a decision believing it is your own can lead to evil. Revenge is the chief path that can sway an individual to committing a heinous act. The victim who lost their child in the accident involving the drunk driver could chose revenge and create evil. Free will is the power that allows for the emotions hate, happiness, jealousy, and the words greed and selfishness to come to life. A man, who must support his family, steals an elderly woman’s purse. He chose to commit the evil but was it justified? The concept of free will is decision making. Decisions made have ramifications; they can be either negative or positive, but a certainty behind these ramifications is that the decider is solely responsible for the outcome. Man could have been placed on earth to find his place in society by making his own choices. Humans would not have been created with the ability to make choices if the choices did not impact themselves and the world around them greatly.
You say that "Evil is explained and dictated by a human’s free will" and that "Decisions made have ramifications; they can be either negative or positive, but a certainty behind these ramifications is that the decider is solely responsible for the outcome." I agree and you can look at examples from the past to prove this; for example, the infamous Jack the Ripper who killed prostitutes because he believed they were ruining and destroying the city he loved. His "slicing and dicing" was certainly evil but it did not go without ramifications (even though he was never caught) as he went down in history as the infamous serial killer.
ReplyDeleteAlso, try to tie in Beowulf into your essay more, you literally only have one sentence about Grendel.