Everything is Sex (#4)

Warning: The following blog post contains awkward situations where a simple scene is a metaphor for sex. Read at your own risk. (Seriously, it gets a little awkward).

So, this post about Beowulf will be a little awkward considering which chapter of How to Read Literature Like a Professor I'm applying it to. The chapter is called "Everything is Sex" which basically tells us that almost everything in a novel is a metaphor for sex. Going off topic a little bit, I would like to personally tell Ms. Pyle that I could have gone my whole life not knowing that a little boy riding a rocking horse is a metaphor for masturbation and I would have been okay with that. Sadly, I read this chapter and learned this information. It will now stay with me forever so thanks Ms. Pyle.

Anyway, back to the main focus of the post, I recently read about Beowulf's triumphant victory of the monster Grendel and then Grendel's mother. It was after reading about these that I realized that the battles between Beowulf and the monsters were also a metaphor for sex. When he fights against Grendel, he is locked in an embrace with him and both are caught in a handgrip against each other. It eventually ends when Beowulf rips off one of Grendel's arms. The fight and grip they are both caught it represents, well, two people having sex. Then, Beowulf ends the act by ripping Grendel's arm off, or climaxing.

The same thing happens when Beowulf is forced to fight Grendel's mother, and this is a little more believable for a metaphor for sex (a man and a woman). It follows the same pattern as the original fight, but ends when Beowulf decapitates Grendel's mother, once again following the pattern mentioned above.

I don't really know how to feel about applying this chapter to Beowulf, as instead of an epic fight, I now only see sex. I know that probably wasn't the original intention when this was written, but now I can't ignore it. I'm also a little frightened about the future mainly because I can read something now and instead of interpretation it as it is, I can now see it as sex.