Comparing Protagonists In Beowulf And Paradise Lost

As seen in the writings and works of others, authors display the attributes of their characters. Protagonists in these stories display admirable characteristics of bravery, purity, and strength while others exhibit qualities such as pride, ruthlessness, and impatience. Antagonists also play important roles as the ones who oppose the protagonists, and they normally include characters with deplorable elements. Paradise Lost and Beowulf not only portray similarities, they also contain differences. As epic poems, they include lengthy narratives concerning serious subjects and heroic deeds and significant events, but these poems have very different stories. Stories have their protagonists, and they also have their antagonists who show similarities

Beowulf contains an Anglo-Saxon epic about a powerful warrior and leader facing many trials where the readers can find strength from his courage. Paradise Lost includes a Christian epic poem where the readers can understand the fall of Adam and Eve in a different light and become familiar with Satan’s side of the argument. Beowulf, the protagonist in the Anglo-Saxon poem, displays a very admirable hero and leader. Unlike Beowulf, the attention leads directly toward the antagonist, Satan in Paradise Lost. In this poem, Satan almost seems pitiful, the opposite of the courageous Beowulf. Instead of finding inspiration and bravery, readers learn from the mistakes Satan makes. Although these poems contain many similarities, their storyline and purposes have many

Both of them include great evils, Satan in Paradise Lost and Grendel in Beowulf. They each start disturbing the peace in their own way. Grendel, a bloodthirsty and hideous monster, enjoys tearing unfortunate people to pieces while Satan takes pleasure in seeing the fall of man through his manipulative and sly strategies. During both poems, these corrupted characters lose to their enemies. Satan ends up in lake of fire that provides darkness instead of light, but he refuses to repent to God of his rebellion. Grendel also fails against his battle with his enemy, Beowulf. In this battle, Beowulf’s strength overpowers Grendel’s, and he loses an arm from this fight for, “in all his days he had never been clamped or cornered like this” (755-756). He flees, mortally wounded, as he leaves a trail of blood. In these epic poems, the antagonists suffer many losses from their terrible actions and relate to each other because of their evil