In the commentary to his translation of Beowulf, J. R. R. Tolkien argues that creatures like Grendel are, in the Scandinavian imagination, essentially the "undead," those who have abandoned God and inhabit areas near tombs and inaccessible places and "with superhuman strength and malice" plague mankind. They inhabit a kind of twilight world in which they feel the absence of God but are unwilling or unable to join with God, and their greatest goal is to ruin mankind's joyfulness, which explains why Grendel is drawn to the celebrations in Heorot.
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