Beowulf - the Prose Translation - Research Paper Example

Beowulf: The Prose Translation Beowulf is about a King, Hrothgar the ruler of the Danes, who is being distressed by the run amok of Grendel, a demon. Grendel attacks the King’s wealthy mead-hall, every night. He kills Danish warriors and even eating them at times. The king felt frustrated and trouble as he could not protect his people like he was able to when he was younger. Auspiciously, Beowulf, a young Great warrior travels to Heorot to offer a helping hand to the kingdom. Beowulf explains to the King that he feels obligated to help him and his kingdom as Hrothgar helped his father. He then offers to fight Grendel the demon and the king accepts the offer. The young warrior, Beowulf waits for Grendel the next time he shows up. Beowulf fights the demon in a hand to hand combat. The young warrior wrestled Grendel to submission and tears off his arm at the shoulder. The demon escapes into the wilderness and dies as he is mortally wounded. To show gratitude, Hrothgar and his followers throw a wild party. Beowulf is also presented with many gifts and treasures as part of gratitude for his heroic act. Unfortunately, Grendel’s mother decides to avenge her son’s death. She attacks the heorot hall when all the warriors are asleep but gets scared when the warriors wake up and flees to her cave, underneath a nearby lake. Beowulf and his Geatish and some of the kings warriors decide to attack her at her cave. Beowulf goes ahead into the cave and has a one on one fight with Grendel’s mother and wins. As he returns back to land, he finds his warriors waiting for him. The king’s warriors had given up on him and assumed that he was dead. Beowulf returns to the hall carrying the sword hilt and the mother demons head. When people see him, there is more merry making and more gifts are given to Beowulf. Finally Beowulf and the Geatish warriors leave Dane for Geatland, where he is a lord in the court of King Hygelac. When King Hygelac and all his relatives are killed in different blood-feuds, Beowulf becomes the King of the Geats. He successfully rules his people for fifty years. He protected them from other tribes especially the Swedes who were the Geats greatest worry. The people of Geats perceive Beowulf as an honorable and heroic king (Kennedy, 1940). Unfortunately for the kingdom, Beowulf meets his match, the dragon. The dragon was woken up by a goblet stealing thief. The dragon begins to attack Geats killing and burning villages. Beowulf takes the thief; who knows where the dragon’s den is and eleven of his most trusted warriors. All run out of fear when they see the dragon except Beowulf and Wiglaf. The two fight the dragon and are able to defeat it. Though victorious, the king, Beowulf is wounded and later dies. The Geats build a big funeral pyre for Beowulf and pile treasures on it. The Geats later build a barrow filled with treasure as a monument for their heroic King. There are various literary devices that have been used in Beowulf. This paper will focus on symbolism that has been used in the book. Symbolism has been represented by many things in the book. The water bodies that are mentioned so many times in the novel are symbolic. In Beowulf there are a number of imperative scenes which entail diverse bodies of water (Shmoop, 2010). Among the different bodies of water involved in Beowulf are the swimming contest involving Beowulf and Breca; the treacherous sea-crossing that Beowulf and his warriors embark on to travel to Denmark from Greatland; the sea side cliffs where Beowulf slay a dragon and meet his death; the bloodstained lake where Grendel’s mother resides in an underwater cave. The question that arises in many people conscious is why the concept of water bodies recurs at many instances and why do the water bodies always give the impression that they are correlated with dangerous things. The most efficient answer to settle these questions is that medieval Scandinavians were seafaring people. This also seemed to be the reason behind the Anglo-Saxons narrating the story of Beowulf centuries later in England. This was due to the fact that the Anglo-Saxon’s ancestors who coincidentally were Germanic and Scandinavian ancestors had navigated across the sea to colonize Britain (Rae, 1998). Beowulf is familiar to the sea and all its dangers since he is a member of the seafaring tribe. However, since Beowulf is an epic the ordinary dangers such as getting lost at sea is replaced with more implausible dangers like sea monsters. The principles in Beowulf remain the same. The part where there is a bloodstained lake and Grendel’s mother resides underneath it, in an underwater cave, this represented the fact that there is tentative danger prowling in any watery voyage. Later on in the epic Beowulf’s warriors pushed the carcass of the slain dragon into the water to dispose of it. This action signified that the warriors were simply returning the monster to the place where it appeared to belong, in water, the unpredictable sea (Bjork et al, 1998). Beowulf also asks Wiglaf to build him a barrow. The barrow could be seen on the coast by seafarers on their watery expeditions. Thus the barrow was not to act only as a monument. It was to remind people of Beowulf, his strengths and success, and for people to see and take courage from while at sea. The brotherhood and unity of the warriors in the tribe is represented by the Heorot along with the other unnamed mead-hall in Geatland where King Hygelac holds sway. The different mead-halls became a place where the kings displayed their gold, manpower and they also acted as symbol of their power. The mead-halls are used as a place of feasts as well as a place where the warriors can sleep. Beowulf and his warriors visit Heorot first and foremost for an official meeting with Hrothgar, secondly for a feast and a feral party and finally at the end of the fateful evening, it acts a sleeping quarter for Beowulf and his warriors. They sleep with their armors and weapons right down beside them. Each mead-hall acts as a barracks, a palace, a bar, a cafeteria all in one. This acts a representation of the extreme life of brutal warfare and formality that the medieval warriors lived. In Beowulf there are quite a few famous swords mentioned, that the reader might have a hard time keeping the facts straight. First and foremost Beowulf is given a sword by Hrothgar after he kills Grendel the local man-eating demon. Secondly, there is the sword that goes by the name Hrunting. This sword is lent to Beowulf by Unferth to fight Grendel’s mother who resides underneath a bloodstained lake in an underwater cave. Regrettably, Hrunting is not successful in doing any harm to the monster, thus Beowulf takes hold of another sword from her horde of wealth. The third sword which Beowulf managed to grab decapitates Grendel’s mother. Through the process the sword’s blade melts when it comes into contact with her poisonous blood. Hrothgar finds out that the hilt is enveloped in impressions of the great flood and destruction of the giants soon after he brings the hilt back to the surface. The fourth sword is a gem studded sword that Beowulf is given by King Hygelac to commemorate his good actions. We can make the presumption that the gem studded sword is the same sword that is called Naegling. Naegling is the sword that breaks when Beowulf utilizes it while attempting to take the life of the dragon (Fulk, 2010). The swords that have been highlighted above are considered the most important ones. There are a few other swords in Beowulf’s epic but they will not be of much significance. Therefore the list of the important sword in the descending order is Hrothgar’s gift, Hrunting, the sword with the engraved hilt and Naegling. These incidences leave us with two questions ringing in the back of our minds: why are there so many swords in Beowulf’s epic and why do the swords fail to harm the enemy. There is an obvious reason behind the high number of sword in the epic. The Beowulf epic is set up in a warrior culture, which their lives rely on the weapons, thus explaining the reason why there are a high number of them around. There are also different weapons with different quality and history thus one sword can succeed to complete a task while the other one fails. The strange thing that should be noted in the epic of Beowulf is that the swords do not accomplish their mission. For instance the sword with the engraved hilt melts when it comes into contact with Grendel’s mother blood; Hruntig fails to cut Grendel’s mother; Naeglig breaks when Beowulf swings it at the dragon. Through these actions the novel gives us a hint, which acts as a reminder, that battles are futile (Chickering, 2006). The novel also gives us the notion that Beowulf becomes more successful in his endeavors when he uses his own body strength instead of weapons which give him a simulated advantage over the monsters. At some point the novel reveals that Beowulf’s strength is so great that his mighty strokes break the blade Naeglig. Conceivably, the heroism that Beowulf possessed was far much greater than the mere weapons could make it. Literary devices help a reader to get a deeper meaning of the novel or poem they are reading (Baldwin, 2000). In this case symbolism has given a deeper meaning to Beowulf. The symbolism has given the reader the intended meaning of the book. The water bodies, the mead-hall and the sword s are all symbols of something. For example the sword represented strength. Works cited Baldwin, Stanley P. Cliffsnotes Beowulf. Foster City, CA: IDG Books Worldwide, 2000. Internet resource. Beowulf by Unknown. Sunnyvale, Calif.: Shmoop University, 2010. Internet resource. Bjork, Robert E, and John D. Niles. A Beowulf Handbook. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. Print. Chickering, Howell D. Beowulf: A Dual-Language Edition. New York: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2006. Print. Fulk, R D. The Beowulf Manuscript: Complete Texts; and the Fight at Finns burg. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2010. Print. Kennedy, Charles W.. Beowulf. S.l.: Oxford, 1940. Print. Rae, Gail. Maxnotes Guide to Literary Terms. Piscataway, N.J: Research & Education Association, 1998. Print. Read More