11. "Suddenly then the God-cursed brute was creating havoc: greedy and grim, he grabbed thirty men from their resting places and rushed to his lair, flushed up and inflamed from the raid, blundering back with the butchered corpses." (120-125)
Grendel isn't only a violent murderer. He's also a "greedy" killer, someone who takes the lives of thirty men at one stroke even though he can't pay reparations for their deaths and there seems little reason for him to lash out in this way. Even though the world of the Spear-Danes and Weather-Geats is a brutal medieval battlefield, Grendel's violence stands out because it just doesn't make sense according to their customs.
12. "'If Grendel wins, it will be a gruesome day; he will glut himself on the Geats in the war-hall, swoop without fear on that flower of manhood as on others before. Then my face won't be there to be covered in death: he will carry me away as he goes to ground, gorged and bloodied; he will run gloating with my raw corpse and feed on it alone, in a cruel frenzy, fouling his moor-nest.'" (442-450)
Beowulf imagines, not just the possibility of his death and defeat, but the exact details of his gruesome demise, what his corpse will look like, and what will happen to his body after he is dead.
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