In my
previous blog post, I stated that the hero and Christian modes within Beowulf were
combined, and that Beowulf is actually a soldier sent by God. There are even
multiple acts committed by Beowulf that could be seen as references to the acts
of Jesus Christ.
An
obvious example from the passage we were assigned to read for Monday would be
before and during Beowulf's battle with Grendel's mother. Lines 1494-1496 state
"he dived into the heaving / depths of the lake. It was the best part of a
day / before he could see the solid bottom." Clearly such an act is
humanly impossible, and the act could be seen as a direct reference to Jesus'
miracle of walking on water.
Another small passage within the section regarding Grendel's mother that stood out to me is lines 1603-1604, which states "[The Shieldings] wished, without hope, to behold their lord, / Beowulf himself." The use of the word "lord" immediately evokes an imagine of God and places Beowulf on the same pedestal as Jesus Christ.
1) Is Beowulf a Christ-figure, or does that statement go too far and he is simply a soldier sent by God (akin to the prophets such as Ezekiel, John the Baptist, etc.)?
2) Why does the author spend several hundred lines having Beowulf recount the entire story so far? The reader is aware of what happened, so why did the author go through it all over again instead of summarizing his re-telling into a few lines of the narrator saying "So Beowulf spent the next 5 hours recounting his tale to his leader..."?
This is interesting. I had not occurred to me to compare Beowulf to Christ, however I agree with your case. Also you could say that Beowulf represents Christ in the way that he is Sacrificial in some ways. For Beowulf is risking his life for others when he could have just easily stayed in his homeland. However it is made clear in the story that Beowulf is the only man that could defeat Grendel and Grendel's Mother, Much like Christ Sacrificed himself to save humanity, because he was the only one capable of doing so.
ReplyDeleteGreat comment Alec and Alex your post was fantastic. Beowulf certainly seems to point to Christ through his actions but I am not sure if that makes him a Christ figure or Christ-like. Your second question is a good one, and I would say it alludes to the centrality of story-telling and myth-making which was at the heart of the Anglo-Saxon culture.
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