The+Way+You+Bring+'Em+Up

From birth boys and girls are generally raised a bit differently from another depending on the household they're raised in which has an impact on their personalities. Most girls will at one point be enrolled in a baby dance class. Boys will play sports. Yes the two sometimes do the opposite, but, seriously, how many boys do you know that will openly admit to being a baby dance class without his mother owning the entire dance school? Personalities are made up of memories so competitiveness is a really big part of playing sports or dancing or whatever. Even in gym class one can notice many things: their are few really competitive girls and very few uncompetitive guys. Maybe it's because of those memories of their childhoods where the girls stayed with their moms all day before going to a dance class where their moms congratulated them saying "oh, you were so good"while guys were driven by their dads to every soccer match and told "go get 'em, Son" by their dads before a game.  

Even in Beowulf and Grendel there are signs of this competitiveness through memories. Beowulf was brought up in a world where confidence and brute strength was the key to making a man seem manly. From an early age he was forced to compete for his rightful place in his home by becoming the strongest and the biggest which eventually he did while winning everyone's respect. On the other hand Wealtheow, Hrothgar's queen, was raised as a proper lady. She was taken away from her home and forced to marry Hrothgar against her will but still, as much as she doesn't like it, she held her head strong and didn't compete against it, staying married to him without too much of a fight because she wasn't raised to behave in such a horrid manor such as the men were.



Although Beowulf and Grendel take place thousands of years ago, the principles still apply. Girls are generally not raised to be quite as competitive as boys. For example, when we did the gym olympics for a week we had eight non-competitive teams and eight competitive teams. On the non-competitive teams you could count the number of boys on your hands even if you counted the four or five that really should have been on competitive. On the competitive side, you could probably count the number of girls that were really there to play competitively rather than to just be with their friends on two hands. Not to mention that those girls who did want to play competitively for real were those who had been playing sports for most of their lives and had lived competing time and time again in whatever sport they played.

Works Cited Cash, Adam. Psychology for Dummies. New York: Hungry Minds, 2002. Print.

Gardner, John. Grendel. New York: Vintage, 1989. Print.

Heaney, Seamus. Beowulf: a New Verse Translation. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000. Print.