Beowulf Is One of the Essay

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This is an archetype that appears again and again throughout history, more as a way to extrapolate and emphasize the best that humans can offer as opposed to being born into a tradition of royalty. The saving of society, though, is usually met with grave personal sacrifice, sometimes of wealth, more often of loved ones, or, in the case of Beowulf, the ultimate sacrifice -- giving up one's own life in the service of society (Raffel intro). So, too, fate is interspersed with a very simple concept of armor -- which corresponds to linage, reputation, and the essentials of what makes an individual unique, certainly not just that they were born of royal blood, but that somewhere and somehow they reached down to the very depths of their soul and found the courage, stamina and something "heroic" in which mere mortals can only hope for:

Beowulf donned his armor for battle,

Heeded not danger; the hand-braided byrny,

Broad of shoulder and richly bedecked,

Must stand the ordeal of the watery depths.

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Well could that corselet defend the frame

Lest hostile thrust should pierce to the heart.

Or blows of battle beat down the life.

A gleaming helmet guarded his head

As he planned his plunge to the depths of the pool

Through the heaving waters -- a helm adorned

With lavish inlay and lordly chains,

Ancient work of the weapon-smith

Skillfully fashioned, beset with the boar,

That no blade of battle might bite it through.(1442-1455).

Beowulf is like many heroes -- Gilgamesh, Siegfried, Odysseus -- courageous in more ways than physical, a leader who exemplified outstanding traits, but also a philosopher, an intellect (finds solution with his mind, too), a true warrior who is also empathetic, and despite eventually being moral, ascribing to immortality through deed and thought.

REFERENCES

Hieatt, A.K. Beowulf and Other Olde English Poems. New York:

Bantam Books, 1983.

Raffel, B. (translator and editor). Beowulf. New York: Penguin, 1999.

Tolkein, J.R. Beowulf the Monsters and the Critics. New York: Oxford

University Press, 1958......

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