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Comment by dvt | Hacker News Reader

This article is embarrassingly wrong. In every single interpretation of the monomyth, we have a hero that strives to be victorious over some form of evil -- often times at great cost. But Ms. Nichols is being disingenuous by cherry-picking The Iliad (which is politically complex) -- why not Beowulf, or The Odyssey -- where we have very clear cases of antagonists and protagonists. Also, the argument that moral face-offs are "a recent invention that evolved in concert with modern nationalism" is so unequivocally wrong, if you said it, you'd be laughed out of an undergraduate English class.

Morally relativist and historically revisionist BS.

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Well, because _Beowulf_ is a Christianized retelling of earlier more pagan versions adding in moralizing (and of course involves a fair bit of nationalism/ethnicism although most people tend to ignore the allusions to the backstories and dynasties because it's hard to keep straight even if it's equally hard to miss that Beowulf dying is considered very ominous for the survivors), so it follows the same pattern as King Arthur discussed in OP: what was originally a relatively neutral set of stories about a warrior fighting monsters then becomes morally inflected - Grendel is not just a bandit or some monster, but he's a descendant of Cain, the first murderer and fratricide, inimitably evil and opposed to all mankind and core Anglo-Saxon moral values like hospitality and feasting which he cannibalistically perverts, and his dam can only be slain by a weapon from Genesis.

Isn't any form of "monster" just a cheap "this thing is evil" marker?

I don't think so. Are the monsters in _Shadow of the Colossus_ evil? Are Humbaba or the Bull of Heaven in Gilgamesh evil? After all, Humbaba may have been 'terrible' but that was his assignment from the gods. (Was Satan the tempter in the Book of Job Evil with a capital E?) They may be dangerous to humans and destructive, but they are merely doing their job or following their nature. It might be better to refer to them, Rowlingesque, as 'fantastic beasts' rather than 'monsters' to avoid the loaded connotations.

Are Jason, Freddy and Michael Myers just monsters? What about the monsters and demons on Supernatural that the Winchester brothers kill because they hurt people?

At what point is something a monster that does bad versus a bad guy that does bad?

Let me try again with an even more mundane example. Is a tiger an evil monster just because it may eat people? At what point is a tiger just an animal which does something people don't like vs a bad guy that does bad? How about a landslide? What would it take to make a landslide evil with a capital E?

In context of the article, it's the myth of good guys versus bad guys instead of gray characters. That means these characters have moral choices to make. A tiger doesn't understand morality, while Kylo Ren and does, but chooses to do join/stay on the dark side, which means causing a lot of people harm, which he's fully aware of.

We don't hold a tiger morally responsible, while most of the beings on the tv show Supernatural would be, since they're capable of making moral choices. Even the ST Borg understand morality, although they consider it irrelevant. But the Federation would probably hold them responsible, if they had the power to put the Borg Queen on trial, like they ended up doing with the Changeling lead female character from the Dominion.

    Tiger Tiger. burning bright,
    In the forests of the night;
    What immortal hand or eye.
    Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

... fire of thine eyes ... dread hand... dread feet ... dread grasp ... deadly terrors, etc., etc.

Blake.

Even if this were true (it isn't; the Norse had nine virtues), that's not the argument she makes. Jesus was born way before "modern nationalism."

Yes, it is. The moralized version is the retelling by later authors for other purposes, as part of the overall gradual transition, as OP exemplifies by King Arthur or the Brothers Grimm. Jesus was born way before King Arthur too. Beowulf would only be a counterexample if the retelling & famous version had deleted the moralizing, rather than rather hamhandedly and awkwardly jamming on the Christianizing and moralizing onto the poet's oral sources. Thus, Beowulf is an example of OP's claims, not a counterexample as you claim.

You're missing the forest for the trees. I don't care if you like or dislike Christian morality. The Norse themselves had their own moral standards (nine virtues, as I mention). If you were courageous, for example, you were "good" -- if you were a coward, you were "bad." That standard (the good/evil dichotomy) has always existed -- but don't take my word for it, read Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil.

Having standards doesn't mean a good/evil dichotomy. Do hunter-gatherers have fullblown Western moralizing because they like competent hunters & story-tellers better than incompetent ones?

> but don't take my word for it, read Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil.

I have, and I'm sure you can come up with a better source than that...

> Having standards doesn't mean a good/evil dichotomy.

I guess we have a foundational disagreement. If you don't think that virtue/anti-virtue pairs, e.g., courage/cowardice or honesty/deception, are essentially good/evil dichotomies, then what are they?

In Beowulf the antagonist is a monster, she at least gives a corollary in the Arthur legendarium. Also, who is portrayed as being evil in the Odyssey? The only two examples I can think of are the suitors and Polyphemus, but the text refers to Odysseus being cunning against these foes rather than “morally justified”. Odysseus even plays the suitors game, because in that culture their behavior is justified. Honestly I think Odysseus is one of the most morally ambiguous characters in all of literature, he’s practically the first anti-hero, to use him as a counter example seems like a huge stretch to me.

Wait, are you seriously saying that Grendel and his mother have no moral valence in the context of Beowulf? As far as the Odyssey is concerned, Athena (Odysseus' patroness and mentor) is literally the god of wisdom and justice. If that's not at least some indication that what he's doing is justified, I don't know what is.

Whatever "moral valence" they do have, you've put there in your reading of the text. Beowulf is just a story about a famous warrior who takes a group of his supporters to help a king with a monster problem.

Really? Why is Grendel characterized as "evil" and a "fiend in hell"? Why does Beowulf exemplify traits of courage, bravery, and self-sacrifice? Why is Beowulf already famous for his "good" and "glorious" deeds?

I was re-reading the intro, and ran into this gem[1]:

    105
	the wretched creature      ruled for a time
        since him the Creator      had condemned
	with the kin of Cain;      that killing avenged

Totally forgot about this literal reference to Cain (of Cain and Abel fame). I mean, you're about as wrong as wrong gets.

[1] http://www.heorot.dk/beowulf-rede-text.html

Because the story of Beowulf that we have is a Christianized version, rewritten by monks. We have no idea what the actual moral framework or symbolism of Grendel was, or wasn't, in the original story.

I know this. What's your point? My argument still easily defeats the original article.

My point is only that we can't really know whether Grendel is supposed to be some meaningless animal force or symbolic of something with a moral dimension because the original story and its context is lost to time.

You don't have a point. Ms. Nichols' argument is that moral face-offs are (and this is an exact quote) "a recent invention that evolved in concert with modern nationalism" -- Beowulf -- Christianized or not -- is a hard counter to that argument. Christ was born, and Beowulf was recorded, much earlier than modern nationalism.

For what it's worth, I can even win the harder argument (considering Beowulf as a piece of non-Christianized Norse mythology), but that's beyond my scope. Margins too small, etc.

> a monster problem.

A monster - literally evil personified in semi human form. You can't really get more good guys Vs bad guys than that.

No, a monster is just a beast, without any necessary moral qualities.

> Derived from the Latin monstrum, the word usually connotes something wrong or evil; a monster is generally morally objectionable, physically or psychologically hideous, or a freak of nature.

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster

I have to disagree. The word "monster" is used for things worse than beasts, "something wrong or evil".

I think you’ve made a straw man of her argument. She didn’t claim there was no morality in the ancient world or no moral perspective in the folklore, just that there are no good guy/bad guy tropes. I have yet to see you give a textual example, at least in the Odyssey, that contradicts her.

I didn't make a straw man, I literally quoted her. Moral face-offs are not a "modern invention" -- I can give very concrete examples: see Odysseus vs. the sirens, Odysseus vs. Polyphemus, Odysseus vs. Circe, Odysseus vs. Poseidon.

Obviously, we won't have a Christian morality in an ancient Greek text, but Odysseus, at every turn, exemplifies the Greek virtues. The virtues he probably most aligns with is justice and courage.

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