Beowulf Essay Essay, Research Paper

Beowulf Essay

Stories have been recounted and recorded for as long as man has walked the earth. Yet only the strong survive the changes of time. The unknown author of Beowulf created a legend. He mastered this extant poem with three terrifying antagonists. Beowulf s character is defined and given room to grow through the life of three monsters.

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The monsters in Beowulf aided the author in creating different facets of Beowulf s character. Each monster serves a unique purpose in forming and illustrating the story. Grendel, the first monster in the story is a man-eating monster which spends his past time terrorizing the Danes of the kingdom because they built a great hall called Herot where they sing songs about God. Grendel has an incredible hate for God because He banished him to lead this treacherous life. Grendel enables the fame of Beowulf to soar. When Beowulf deters the efforts of this awful creature with his bare hands he is suddenly loved my the masses like a teen pop star. The author brought about Beowulf s courage and strength by challenging it with a monster like Grendel. This battle between them made possible a growth, a change in Beowulf s character, developing the story.

These Ogres in the story also allowed the author to better describe Beowulf s traits and personality. He uses the mother of Grendel, for example, to teach the reader about Beowulf s loyalty. After the mother captured a loyal subject of Beowulf in an attempt at revenge for her son s loss, Beowulf was given a chance to prove himself once again to the reader. The author used these situations to demonstrate, in extreme, the awesomeness of Beowulf s deep character. He proved undying loyalty by pursuing the mother monster and killing her. Each monster unveiled a new admiring trait in Beowulf to the reader.

After a time lapse, the story was lacking excitement on the battlefield so once again, our hero was called to battle. The third monster, the dragon proved to the reader to play a different role for our trusty Beowulf. The dragon helped us realize that though we ve been brought up to idolize kings and queens, heroines and heroes, they are not immortal. And like every human thing, must die. The fact that Beowulf was mortal makes him that much more appealing. It means that there is a piece of Beowulf in each of us. Everyone carries inside of them his courage, or his strength, and that makes the story what it is.

Beowulf s character is defined and given room to grow through the life of three monsters. These three monsters allowed the author to create Beowulf s character and unfold it to the audience. More battles were enabled by the presence of more than one antagonist and this provided room for Beowulf to develop as an individual. The dragon, specifically, brought together the story and related Beowulf to the reader in a saddening, but realistic way. Beowulf is the masterpiece of centuries, a poem passed down through time that will be forever young.