Beowulf and the Hero Archetype

The story of the epic poem Beowulf is set during the 6th century BCE in Denmark. The poem opens with Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, opening a mead hall that he calls Heorot for his subjects. The happy and carefree atmosphere of the mead-hall doesn’t last long, as a terrifying monster named Grendel starts attacking the hall soon after it opens. He does this every night for over twelve years, the king powerless to stop the greedy goblin and his subjects not strong enough to defeat it. Thankfully, Beowulf, a great warrior who happens to be the nephew of Hygelac, the king of the Geats, hears of Hrothgar’s trouble and sails to his kingdom. When Beowulf arrives, he tells Hrothgar that he is more than willing to help him, especially since Hrothgar helped Beowulf’s father a while ago and he owes him a favor for that. Later that night, Beowulf waits in Heorot Hall for the nightly arrival of the monster. When Grendel arrives, Beowulf fights him in a hand-to-hand conflict, ultimately ending with Beowulf ripping Grendel’s arm off from the shoulder. The wound is fatal, and the monster returns into the wilderness to die. Beowulf is celebrated the next day, with Hrothgar giving him gifts to show his appreciation. The celebration doesn’t last long, as Grendel’s mother arrives soon afterwards to attack the kingdom and avenge her son’s death. She attacks Heorot Hall while the warriors sleep. However, the warriors wake up during her rampage and force her back to her lair in a cave underneath a lake. Beowulf is called into action. He rushes after the monster with a troop of warriors by his side. Once he arrives at the lake, he dives in alone and swims into her lair, finding the body of Grendel inside. He grabs a sword from Grendel’s mother’s pile of treasures and uses it to slay her once and for all. He swims up in triumph, grabbing her son’s head and bringing it with him to the surface. The village celebrates Beowulf once again before he announces that he must return to his homeland. He sails away, and when he finally arrives home, he is celebrated again and subsequently becomes the king of the Geats. His rule lasts for fifty years until one day, a dragon starts attacking his people. He fights it off and successfully kills it but is mortally wounded in the process. The Geats cremate Beowulf and build a memorial-barrow to remember his legacy as an incredible leader and a great king.

Beowulf is considered one of the oldest major works of literature originally written in the English language-- it was originally written in Old English. It is also considered one of the oldest poems still in existence. The poem was likely written sometime around the 7th century BCE by an unknown author who is typically referred to as the “Beowulf Poet.” However, the story of the poem existed long before the poem itself was written. Much of the story had been told orally for decades before the poem was written, and elements of the story including setting and characters date back to before the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian peoples migrated to Britain several hundred years prior to the writing of the poem. The poem was composed in England, not Scandinavia (despite the fact that the poem centers around a pre-Anglo-Saxon kingdom), in a historical perspective, recording the culture of the pre-Anglo-Saxon culture. In fact, some of the values demonstrated in the poem, including the heroic codes, were still around by the time the poem was written and many of the characters in the poem correlate to actual historical figures. Beowulf was written after a large-scale conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity near the end of the sixth century. Because of this, even though the story is of Anglo-Saxon origins, the poem tells the story through a Christian narrator desperately trying to give Christian values to characters with pagan beliefs. Despite the fact that religious tensions are evident in works published around this time like The Dream of the Rood, the combination of a pagan story and a Christian narrator is rather uncommon. Only one manuscript of the original Beowulf survived the Anglo-Saxon era, and over time, it was eventually forgotten about. In fact, it was almost destroyed in a fire during the seventeenth century. However, in the nineteenth century, interest in the manuscript once again spread across scholars and Old English translators. This re-sparked interest was initially primarily historical, with scholars looking at the poem as a written record of the Anglo-Saxon era. However, in 1936, J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, wrote a paper about the poem while he was an Oxford scholar. The paper, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” was the first to recognize Beowulf not just as a historical piece, but also as a serious work of art. Today, Beowulf is taught as a poetry standard, with curriculums presenting it as the first important piece of English literature and as a major influence on the English canon. However, because of the fact that the poem faded into obscurity during the time of writers like Keats, Shakespeare, and Shelley, it didn’t influence many writers until the nineteenth to twentieth centuries. Since then, it has marked impact on the work of many writers. These include writers such as W.H. Audrey, Ted Hughes, and Seamus Heaney (who actually translated the poem himself in 1999).

The slaying of Grendel’s mother in her lair in Beowulf is reminiscent of Harry Potter slaying the basilisk at the end of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. After a long battle between human and monster, the human finally gets the upper hand and uses a sword to slay the beast. In Beowulf, the title character uses a sword he finds in a nearby stash of treasure to slay the beast, while in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the title character uses a special sword brought to him by his headmaster, Dumbledore’s, phoenix, Fawkes, to stab the beast in the roof of the mouth. Both of these actions result in the monster’s reign of terror ending once and for all, and the hero is ultimately celebrated for his actions. The fantastical setting of the poem is reminiscent of Lord of the Rings, with fantastical creatures scattered throughout both stories. In fact, the dragon at the end of Beowulf could be compared to Smaug, the dragon from The Hobbit. Other elements, including the action scenes, the medieval setting, and the hero sacrificing himself at the end of the story, are all elements modern audiences still experience today through stories like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and The Hobbit. Beowulf’s character arc, however, sticks out as very different from the character arc of many modern-day heroes. For example, in the first Harry Potter book, The Sorcerer’s (or Philosopher’s) Stone, Harry does not believe Hagrid, the gamekeeper of the wizarding school Hogwarts, when he tells him that he is, in fact, a wizard and has been accepted into Hogwarts. Throughout the course of the rest of the Harry Potter series, Harry struggles to face the challenges he is forced to overcome because of the fact that he is “the boy who lived,” including a bloodthirsty warlock named Voldemort who is set to kill him once and for all, fame at a young age, and growing up attempting to balance his human and wizarding lives. A lot of other modern heroes struggle to accept their role in society or requests to become a hero, too. In Star Wars: A New Hope, Luke initially rejects Obi-Wan Kenobi’s offer to rescue Princess Leia because he has work to do on his home planet of Tatooine. In Spider-Man, Peter Parker attempts to balance his normal life, balancing school and his social life, with his life as Spider-Man, saving the city from constant attacks. These modern heroes sometimes initially reject their “call to adventure,” as Joseph Campbell called it in his famous “hero’s journey” philosophy, and usually always struggle with the responsibility that they are given as heroes. Beowulf, meanwhile, is an experienced hero from the very beginning of his story. In the poem, Beowulf never once questions whether or not he’s actually a hero. Sure, he has to face some pretty tough challenges, including fighting three monsters throughout the course of his respective story. However, throughout the poem, he never rejects his various “calls to adventure” and he never questions whether or not he can finish the tasks he is set out to accomplish. In fact, by the time the story of the poem starts, he’s already such an experienced warrior that he probably doesn’t even need to worry about whether or not he can slay the beasts terrorizing Hrothgar and the Danes or the dragon terrorizing the Geats. This is quite unlike a lot of today’s heroes, who the reader or viewer sees question their abilities throughout the course of their respective stories.