Chad Marshall
Medieval Humanities
Dr. Weber
11 February 2019
The Brave, The Boneheaded, and The Bold
Beowulf is a story loved by many in the field of literature as it stands the test of time as one of the most glorified adventures of a single, brave man defeating evil meant to disrupt the very Christian God himself. Since its conception, the legend was handed down orally before any written manuscripts were transcribed. The most famous of which is now part of a collection of medieval manuscripts called the Nowell Codex. Many popular translations were written by authors like J.R.R. Tolkien and Burton Raffel, who retell the elegy, make design choices which uniquely alter how the story is told. Most translations keep to the original intention of the story while Tolkien writes another variation called the Sellic Spell, which reconstructs the first two-thousand lines of Beowulf. The commentaries of most translations raise the question: what is the major theme of the original Beowulf? What makes Beowulf a tragic hero is that he heroically dies. He tragically leaves his people potentially leaderless. Fame and recognition are interchangeable as they represent a life after death; a form of immortality. However, inconsistencies exist between Beowulf’s interactions with Grendel and the Dragon as characters. They are strikingly different in terms of design which unravels a possibility that the Beowulf could have been written by several authors.
In the manuscript, the reader is introduced to Grendel, a fiend who is born of Cain (Raffel 106). He grows weary of the township celebrating in the mead-hall, so he kills the hall and fights Beowulf. Beowulf fights and kills Grendel without the need of his sword or armor. Grendel’s mother learns of her son’s death and storms the Golden Hall. She takes back her son’s arm, which was a trophy, and kills the King’s best man. Once King Hrothgar found Beowulf, Beowulf ventures to her underwater cave and kills her. Note that Beowulf dismantled both antagonists with relative ease, save Grendel’s mother almost stabbing Beowulf. Grendel and his mother are both considered enemies of God and enemies of mankind. In his essay Beowulf: The Monsters and The Critics, Tolkien argues that Beowulf is a Christian poem that is set in a pre-Christian past. At the time of Beowulf’s conception, paganism was a relic of an older, yet unforgotten world. He notes that paganism did not have to completely cease for people to be influenced by Christianity (Tolkien 119). Grendel and his mother are monsters rather then demons. The theme alluded to as victory after death discussed earlier.
During this time, Beowulf was a warrior. Beowulf becomes king of the Geats when Hrethel’s son is slain in battle (Raffel 1845-1855). He has the responsibility to protect his people, yet when he chooses to face the dragon, he faces it alone (Raffel 2323). Perhaps Beowulf was filled with hubris from his many victories. But the dragon has stark differences from the Grendel-kin. In his essay, Tolkien notes that the dragon is not ”dragon enough“ (Tolkien 114). The dragon burns a kingdom to the ground due to the disappearance of a single cup. The dragon is not acting out of malice, greed, or destruction; it is only acting upon the wrongs that have been done to it. This shows that it has its own intelligence and consciousness, making it far more different than the inherent Anti-Christ, being the Grendel-kin. This makes the dragon a negative of Beowulf, because just as Beowulf is protecting his kingdom, the dragon is protecting his property. The Grendel-kin and the dragon also have different roles. The Grendel-kin act as stepping stones for Beowulf to become king, while the dragon acts as an end curtain for the life and story of Beowulf.
While generally agreed on that the poem Beowulf is a Christian poem set in a Pre-Christian past, I would argue that the poem, or rather the Pagan epic that originally encompassed the ideas and themes that the original narrative could have been, has been “Christianized.” Similar to how the Dream of the Rood displays Jesus as a warrior, perhaps pieces of the oral story that was during a Pagan past were remembered through a Christian lens so that it would appeal to their modern society. But this does not help with the inconsistencies with the Grendel-kin and the dragon, or does it? Dragons as their current form are seemingly a Christian creation as dragons before the inception of Christianity are closer to serpents than they are to dragons.
Just as the deaths of the Grendel-kin lead to Beowulf gaining the throne, the simultaneous deaths of Beowulf and dragon lead to the kingdom of the Geats being without a king. This inevitably leads to the defeat of the Geats by the Swedes later in history, yet Beowulf was content for what the future holds. In Tolkien’s Beowulf, Beowulf laments that he is heirless and has no one to don his armor, but at least he ruled for fifty years without war knocking at his doorstep (Tolkien 2290-2295). Although this is his achievement, he has also lost some of that Hercules juice which makes it blatantly clear that Beowulf was no longer a warrior; he was a king. A bold king he was, with a nation and its people on his shoulders. He was king but without any heirs, his fictitious kingdom would fall since his people lost their greatest threat deterrent (Raffel 2911). At this point in his life, he cannot have asked for a better death. In this sense, no matter how selfish it may be, there was victory in Beowulf’s death.
Works Cited
Raffel, Burton. Beowulf: A New Translation with an Introduction, Mentor Books, 1963.
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Monsters and the Critics. London: HarperCollins, 1997.
Tolkien, J R. R, Christopher Tolkien, and J R. R. Tolkien. Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary : Together with Sellic Spell, 2014.