- Grendel's totally going downhill. The boredom is more than he can take.
- Other things are falling apart, too: the Shaper is sick.
- And then Grendel has a strange encounter with a stupid goat that shows up by his mere.
- Grendel warns the goat to get away, but it won't obey; it just keeps climbing up the rock. It's like Grendel's lost his monster touch. But, hey: fish gotta swim, goats gotta climb.
- Grendel is enraged by the creature's stupidity and decides to kill it.
- Nature, however, totally wins out. The goat is determined to climb, because that's just what goats do.
- And climb that goat does, no matter that Grendel has skewered it and crushed its skull. Even as it dies, that thing is still trying to climb.
- Lesson? We've gotta do what's in our nature.
- Now, it's in Grendel's nature to stalk the Scyldings. So he watches the village, the seacoast, and the huts.
- Grendel hears the first whispers of trouble when he listens to mothers telling their children about a giant with the strength of 30 men who will deliver them from their troubles. Grendel thinks this is another one of those lies humans tell themselves.
- But there's one story the humans tell their children that is true. Disobedient children who do not come in for dinner when called disappear in the night. Hm, we wonder what's up with that...
- The Shaper continues to decline. Grendel can see the old man's assistant sitting by his side and people coming and going—even the king and his family.
- Grendel sees Wealtheow tending to the sick man. She humors him and comforts him.
- Seeing all of this, Grendel gets to be a total wreck. And as we know, when this monster starts riding the emotional rollercoaster, he totally lets his evil side out to play. He laughs at the helplessness of the dying Shaper.
- The Shaper tries to prophesy about the Danes' future while he is on his deathbed, but he doesn't have the strength to get the words out. So once again, everything hangs in the balance.
- Now the scene shifts to another house and another beautiful woman. (Grendel watched this one in the past, too.)
- This woman is someone the Shaper had admired from a distance. He sang his songs for her.
- Grendel now sees the Shaper's attendant deliver the news that the old man has died. He watches the reaction of the woman: she is thoughtful and sad.
- Grendel still doesn't understand human emotion—and this frustrates him. Um, and as we know, when this dude is frustrated, he stress eats.
- Grendel wants to gobble up this woman, but he decides to watch the women prepare the Shaper for burning.
- Grendel gets no answers to his questions on this night, and he gets no comfort at home. His mother has gone completely insane. She tries to keep him in the cave, but she can barely make sounds and drool.
- The death of the Shaper and the horror of his mother's condition make Grendel think about his place in time. He realizes that his life is gradually slipping away.
- Grendel decides to attend the Shaper's funeral, but Mama refuses to let him go. For a minute, Grendel wonders if she knows something, somewhere in that crazy brain of hers. He goes to the funeral, anyway.
- The Shaper's assistant has taken over the harp and now sings of a story contained in the "Finnsburh Episode". It's a particularly bleak piece of poetry, so the goal is definitely not to raise the spirits here.
- The Shaper's pyre is lit, and the priests do their thing. Grendel has a "human" response as he mourns the end of an era, even though that period of time had made him miserable.
- Cut back to the cave. Grendel is waking up. He thinks he hears something coming from the sea.
- Mama is making sounds, and Grendel tries to interpret. He thinks she's saying: "Beware the fish."
- Grendel falls into a prophetic vision. At least, we assume it's prophetic, since he narrates something that only happens after his death in Beowulf: his mother's revenge.