Laurel Holcomb
ca. 800
Author’s Biography
Beowulf is revered for its literary importance as a rare Old English epic poem. The original poem was likely written in the Mercian dialect, but surviving manuscripts were edited to a West-Saxon dialect.[1] A fire in the early 1700s unfortunately burned parts of Beowulf and might have destroyed other Old English epics now lost to history.[2] Thankfully, other small Old English epics and enough of Beowulf’s manuscript were preserved well enough to highlight what “Germanic oral epic must have been like when performed.”[3] Scholars have many theories on the origins of Beowulf’s plot, the date is was created, and the identity of its anonymous author. Based on evidence such as word choice, handwriting, and cultural references, we can presume that Beowulf was written in the 700s at the earliest by a solitary, Christian, English poet.
Summary of Text
Despite these likely national and religious characteristics of Beowulf’s author, the story follows two Germanic tribes and features pagan traditions. This epic poem centers on thane, Beowulf, who travels to the kingdom of the Danes after hearing of how badly Heorot Hall had been terrorized by a night monster. At Heorot, King Hrothgar’s court is greatly impressed with Beowulf’s chivalry and immediately invites him to dinner as a thane of most high regard. Beowulf quickly sets himself up as a superior, brave hero through his account of his harrowing journey across the sea. He also vows that unlike all other knights of Hrothgar’s court, he will successfully put an end to the night monster’s killing sprees. By this point, we know the monster to be an evil descendant of Cain named Grendel. That night, Beowulf makes good on his vow and his triumph is celebrated the following night at another court dinner. While there is peace for a short while, trouble soon stirs up again when Grendel’s mother (who is never named) comes to Heorot to avenge her son’s death. The court is blindsided and devastated by the deaths of dear friends. Beowulf then treks to the aquatic home of the monsters where after a long fight, he kills them both. Beowulf insisted he take on that fight alone and he returned to Heorot afterward with Grendel’s head and one of the monsters’ heirloom swords. Beowulf eventually returned to his own kingdom of the Geats where he soon ascended the throne. The story ends with one last fight between Beowulf and a dragon who’s stirred conflict in his kingdom. Note that this dragon guards an invaluable heap of treasure. Beowulf once again insists he take on the fight alone. While he kills the dragon, the dragon also kills him. Beowulf dies with the treasure and is buried with it, per his request.
Analysis of Text
One pattern I noticed in Beowulf was the double standard between the City World and the Green World. From the onset of Beowulf, readers are presented with the idea of Grendel and the monsters as evil and Beowulf and the kingdoms as good. Ironically, Beowulf uses Biblical references to support the claim of Grendel being evil, but Beowulf himself repeatedly acts in ways that the Bible calls evil. Beowulf’s errs in morality are implicitly justified by his membership in the City World, while the monsters’ errs are explicitly demonized in conjunction with their membership in the Green World. Regardless of whether he did it intentionally, I argue that the Beowulf poet’s invocation of Christian ideals of good and evil were negated by the hypocrisy seen throughout the text.
From the beginning of the story, the author uses vivid biblical references to introduce Grendel to readers as the epitome of evil personified. More than just a descendant of Cain, he describes the so-called “prowler” as a “powerful demon. . .a fiend out of hell. . .[a] God-cursed brute. . .[and a] dark death shadow.”[4] Later in the same chapter, the narrator laments how Hrothgar’s people use pagan practices to try to solve the issue of the night attacks.[5] He contrasts these “cursed” people with others, presumably like himself, who are blessed because “. . .after death [they] can approach the Lord and find friendship in the Father’s embrace.”[6] Through emphasizing Grendel’s evilness and explicitly distancing himself from the Dane Kingdom’s pagan traditions, the narrator is teeing up readers to condemn Grendel (and the Green World he comes from) and to respect the protagonist—who will soon be revealed as Beowulf. Up to this point, the good-vs-evil theme of the story is fair and logical. Cain was cursed in the Bible for the violent sin of killing his brother, so it makes sense that his descendants would be evil, cursed murderers too. Furthermore, the earliest suspected writing dates of Beowulf were during times when Christianity was sweeping across the Anglo-Saxon world; therefore, it makes sense that the author used ever-more popular Christianity to represent goodness to his audience.
These attempted divisions of good and evil weaken as the story progresses as characters undermine the idea that one world is fully good or fully evil. After Beowulf fatally attacks Grendel, Grendel’s Mother quickly attacks Heorot to avenge her son.[7] Readers are informed in the introduction of the text of the practice of avenging and revenge payments as something commonly done when one’s family member is killed.[8] Considering this, we can conclude that Grendel’s Mother was fully embodying her role as a good mother who cared about her son and who responded to his predicament exactly how the traditions of the time dictated she should. Despite this care—which one would hope to see in any parent towards their child—Grendel’s Mother is described in her fight scene with Beowulf as a “swamp-thing from hell, [a] tarn-hag in all her terrible strength.”[9] Much later in the story, when Beowulf is preparing to fight the dragon, he is described as “too proud to line up with a large army against the sky-plague.”[10] From there, the story goes on praise Beowulf as a warrior and king. After he finally does fight the dragon and die, Beowulf is buried with its treasure per his request despite how much the treasure could have benefitted his kingdom.[11] Per my aforementioned point, it makes sense that the Cain’s descendants would be evil and that the author would use a Christian warrior as his protagonist. If the story continued to make biblical differentiations between the Green World and the City, it would be easy to believe that the two worlds were accurate representations of evil and good, respectively. However, the contradictions in Beowulf’s character traits (good Christian king, yet prideful and greedy) make this hard to do.
The author clearly wants to use the Bible as both a tool for condemning the Green World’s evil and a tool for exalting Beowulf’s goodness. He fails to do this effectively by allowing Beowulf to stray from the Bible’s definition of good with so little pushback. I have almost read the Bible cover to cover, and I couldn’t count how many times pride and greed are condemned and warned against in scripture. Yet somehow, a nod to Beowulf’s pride is immediately followed by lines of how great a leader he is; then, the story ends with his greed for the treasure being honored.[12] The hypocrisy of these choices—promoting Beowulf as the antithesis of the Green World’s Bible-based evil despite his flagrant displays of two of the Seven Deadly Sins—makes the author’s characterization of both worlds less reputable. How is one to trust that the Green World is as malevolent as the author makes it out to be when his depiction of Beowulf’s goodness has such glaring contradictions? Literature can be a wonderful medium for making black and white points, especially those like the common theme of good vs evil. Beowulf would have been a better story if it either committed to displaying the City and the Green World in ways that accurately reflected biblical good and evil or if it made the characters from each world more three dimensional, thus forcing the reader to think about what truly constitutes good and evil. Unfortunately, the Beowulf we have available to us falls somewhere in between these two literary choices.
WORKS CITED
Greenblatt, S. (2020). The Norton Anthology of English Literature Core Selections Ebook. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company.
Unknown. (8th Century). Beowulf.
[1] Greenblatt, 31
[2] Greenblatt, 31
[3] Greenblatt, 31
[4] Beowulf, 86, 100, 121, 160
[5] Beowulf, 175
[6] Beowulf, 183
[7] Beowulf, 1276
[8] Greenblatt, 31
[9] Beowulf, 1518
[10] Beowulf, 2345
[11] Beowulf, 2799, 3160
[12] Beowulf, 3160