Tag Archives: mass shootings

This Time, Grendel Chooses Nashville

By Robin Bates | Published: March 28, 2023

With another mass shooting, this one closer to home, I once again invoke “Beowulf.”

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Debunking Cherished Myths

By Robin Bates | Published: May 30, 2022

In Brecht’s “Galileo,” we see how myths blind us to facts. Consider the the wild west myth that a only good guy with a gun will take down a bad guy with a gun.

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Massacre Machinery & Slaughterhouse 5

By Robin Bates | Published: May 25, 2022

Kurt Vonnegut, one who has seen the horrors of war, was a passionate opponent of guns in civilian hands.

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When Evil Quotes Dylan Thomas

By Robin Bates | Published: August 26, 2019

Tuesday High school English teacher extraordinaire Carl Rosin has several times contributed essays to Better Living through Beowulf, usually writing about his students grappling with ethical issues through a literary lens. (Carl recently served on the National Humanities Center Teacher Advisory Council.) In today’s post we learn about his class exploring what it means for […]

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Racism, Traveler of Darkness

By Robin Bates | Published: August 3, 2019

Spiritual Sunday  When Dylan Roof walked into a Charleston Sunday School class and gunned down those who had welcomed him in, South Carolina poet Marcus Amaker composed the following poem. God may seem absent when hatred opens fire upon innocents, as occurred once again yesterday in El Paso, but Amaker finds hope in the belief […]

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Children Leading the Way on Gun Control

By Robin Bates | Published: March 26, 2018

The young people helping America rediscover decency concerning guns resemble Mary and Colin in “The Secret Garden.”

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NRA Uber Alles

By Robin Bates | Published: February 17, 2018

Scott Bates “unloads” on the NRA in a poem which never goes out of date.

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Grendel Strikes in Orlando

By Robin Bates | Published: June 12, 2016

In what has become a grim tradition for this blog, I rerun my post on Grendelian violence in response to the Orlando mass killing at a gay bar.

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This Time Grendel Chose Umpqua

By Robin Bates | Published: October 1, 2015

Every time there is another mass killing, this time at Umpqua Community College, I turn to “Beowulf.” Few works understand such violence as well as this medieval Anglo-Saxon epic.

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