Heroism In Beowulf

In any story one will read in his or her lifetime, he or she will come across many novels chronicling the story between the rise and the fall of the protagonist. In the epic poem Beowulf, the narrator recants a story of a great Anglo-Saxon warrior by the name of Beowulf, who defeated many monsters throughout his lifetime. According to the great English author, J.R.R Tolkien, the poem is a balance between the romantic and tragic journey of a hero. The dynamic between the ascension to greatness and the plummet of the great Anglo-Saxon hero is shown throughout the epic of Beowulf. The theme of rising from almost nothing is shown in the first pages of the poem through the example of the Danish king, Shild. At the beginning of the poem, there is a great Danish king, Shild Shiefson, who is mentioned as “an abandoned child, but changed his own fate, / Lived to be rich

This shows that even the strongest warrior must meet his demise one day. When Beowulf becomes king of the Geats, who had led his country through fifty years of peace, his strength fails him as he fights against the dragon. The once great king, Beowulf loses his life as the dragon “drove its tusks / Into Beowulf’s neck” (2691-2692). In the lay of the last survivor, the survivor recalls that “the harp’s / Bright song, the hawk crossing through the hall…the stallion tramping / In the courtyard” were “all gone, creatures of every / Kind, and their masters, hurled to the grave!” (2262-2265, 2265-2266) as he buries the riches that had been accumulated through the years of greatness within his kingdom. Just as everything has a beginning, it must have an end; with the biblical context in the epic, it coincides with the bible teaching of ashes to