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The people's fate depend on the outcome of the fight between the hero and the dragon, and, as a hero, Beowulf must knowingly face death. [22] Wiglaf is the single warrior to return and witness the death of the hero. Illustration by J. R. Skelton, 1908. Beowulf's eventual death from the dragon presages "warfare, death, and darkness" for his ...
When the rest of the men finally return, Wiglaf bitterly admonishes them, blaming their cowardice for Beowulf's death. Beowulf is ritually burned on a great pyre in Geatland while his people wail and mourn him, fearing that without him, the Geats are defenceless against attacks from surrounding tribes.
Wiglaf speaking to the mortally wounded Beowulf after their battle with the dragon. 1908 illustration by J. R. Skelton. Wiglaf first appears in Beowulf at line 2602, as a member of the band of thanes who go with Beowulf to seek out the dragon that has attacked Geat-Land. This is the first time Wiglaf has gone to war at Beowulf's side.
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.
The next day, Beowulf was lauded and a skald sang and compared Beowulf with the hero Sigmund. However, during the following night Grendel's mother arrived to avenge her son's death and collect weregild. As Beowulf slept in a different building he could not stop her. He resolved to descend into the bog in order to kill her.
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. Beowulf then returns to the surface and to his men at the "ninth hour". [4]
Beowulf, too, concerns the life and death of its hero. [ 41 ] [ 42 ] [ 43 ] Flieger writes that Tolkien saw Beowulf as "a poem of balance, the opposition of ends and beginnings": [ 40 ] the young Beowulf rises, sails to Denmark, kills Grendel, becomes King; many years later, the old Beowulf falls, killing the dragon but going to his own death.
After Beowulf kills him, Grendel's mother attacks the hall and is then also defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland in Sweden and later becomes king of the Geats. After fifty years have passed, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is fatally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants bury him in a tumulus, a