Helton 1

Dylan Helton
Mrs. Tieman
English 12
9 January 2015
Beowulf
Throughout history, people have always looked to their heroes to get through
hard times, or just as stories the elders would tell to inspire their people. And even
todays fictional and real heroes are told to inspire people. There are many heroes
these people would tell of, but these heroes had many of the same traits, and some
of them can be found in the epic hero Beowulf. Beowulf always puts his own safety
last, but at the same time, he wants to prevent future problems and bring glory for
himself.
When Beowulf was young, he went out to sea to fight sea monsters. There
was really no explanation for this but to bring glory for himself. When he went out to
sea, he probably didnt expect any outcome such as making the sea routes safer for
the ships that use them. So with his life at risk, and no true reason, Beowulf fights
and kills nine sea monsters, making the sea routes safer for sailors to travel, and all
for his own glory.
As a hero, Beowulf thinks of himself last and thinks of others and this thought
propels himself to fight for others who may not be able to fight. In the epic Beowulf,
Beowulf does this a few times throughout the story, but the example that is most
important, I think, to look at is the fact that Beowulf risked his own life to fight
Grendel in a foreign land to help the Danes survive and live in peace. With this said,

Helton 2
one can see that Beowulf was willing to give up the safety of his own home land to
sail across the sea and fight Grendel that has been killing the Danes warriors and
people.
On a deeper note, looking back into the story, Beowulf solved problems,
which were not even problems at the moment. The first was fighting Grendels
mother. From the start of the story, Grendel has been the main enemy or threat to
the Danes. His mother was never even brought up in the story till Beowulf went to
find and kill her in her underwater cave. The issue at hand was that she can come
from deepest depths of hell and kill, just like Grendel did; but she wasnt doing this
at the time of Grendels death. To prevent this from ever happening, and after killing
Grendel, Beowulf went to kill her. By the end of the part, he did kill her and in turn,
ended the problem faced by the Danes.
Another example of Beowulf preventing any future problem that may occur is
at the end. When the thief stole the jeweled cup from the dragon about fifty years
later, the dragon became upset and furious. Beowulf saw this as an issue and could
have solved this by having the thief just return the cup, Beowulf was king at this
timebut Beowulf saw this to be more problematic than it really was at the time. He
may have thought that the dragon would not calm down or may go on a killing
spree, so once again, Beowulf set out to kill this dragon. He fought the good fight,
but luck was not with him; his sword failed him and was killed, with his men running
away. This in the long run didnt solve any problems, and left the Geats without a
king. One may say to himself that this solved no issues, but if one looks back into
the story, one can see that Beowulf mad an effort to solve this problem. With the
problem not fixed but an effort made, the point is this made about Beowulf
preventing, or in this case attempting to prevent, future problems.

Helton 3
From this analysis, one can see that Beowulf was a hero with incredible
strength and was much smarter than what the epic told. But all in all, Beowulf
shows the story of one man and his fight to glory, but there is a deeper meaning I
found in the story, individual countries and nations may come across problems too
great for just themselves to deal with, and must call upon others for the help;
humans work better together than alone and in recent human history, there were
World War I, World War II, and even space exploration. In each of these events,
there were always individual people who stood out from the rest, and earned the
title of hero, through a medal, or becoming a character in a fictional story sometime
in the future.