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Beowulf tears off Grendel's arm, mortally wounding the creature. Grendel flees but dies in his marsh den. There, Beowulf later engages in a fierce battle with Grendel's mother in a mere, over whom he triumphs with a sword found there. Following her death, Beowulf finds Grendel's corpse and removes his head, which he keeps as a trophy.
He points out that the poem's theme is a serious one, mortality, and that the poem is in two parts: the first on Beowulf as a young man, defeating Grendel and his mother; the second on Beowulf in old age, going to his death fighting the dragon. The work has been praised by critics including the poet and Beowulf translator Seamus Heaney.
However, when Hrunting fails Beowulf in his battle against Grendel's mother, it possibly reflects its previous owner, Unferth, who failed to defeat the hated Grendel. [4] In addition, Beowulf's defeat of Grendel prompts the Danish king Hrothgar to bestow upon him many gifts consisting of weapons; this further emphasizes the importance of ...
Beowulf spots another sword, hanging on the wall and apparently made for giants, and cuts her head off with it. Travelling further into Grendel's mother's lair, Beowulf discovers Grendel's corpse and severs his head with the sword. Its blade melts because of the monster's "hot blood", leaving only the hilt.
Hrothgar is plunged into gloom and near-despair after Grendel's mother attacks the hall and kills Hrothgar's best friend and closest advisor; [21] but when Beowulf advises him not to despair, and that "it is better to avenge our friends than to mourn overmuch", Hrothgar leaps to his feet and thanks God for Beowulf's wise words, and leads the ...
He ends by predicting a bad result if Beowulf dares face Grendel. Beowulf answers the challenge by boasting that he is the strongest swimmer in the world, and entertains the company with a tale about how, in that contest, he swam the North Sea in full armor while carrying a sword, killed nine huge sea-monsters who dragged him to the ocean floor ...
It represents Tolkien's attempt to reconstruct the folktale underlying the narrative of the first half of Beowulf. The book ends with two versions of Tolkien's "The Lay of Beowulf". The former, subtitled "Beowulf and Grendel", is a poem or song [5] of seven eight-line stanzas about Beowulf's victory over Grendel. The latter is a poem of fifteen ...
Beowulf is an epic poem in Old English, telling the story of its eponymous pagan hero.He becomes King of the Geats after ridding Heorot, the hall of the Danish king Hrothgar, of the monster Grendel, [a] who was ravaging the land; he dies saving his people from a dragon.