I AM (writing a blog about) BEOWULF!!

A look through the poem Beowulf.

Hello guys, welcome back to my blog! I hope you all had a great summer, what did you all do, did you all read anything interesting? Well, the school has started back up for me, and I have been given a chance to read Beowulf. (of course, the translated version by Burton Raffel because I have not achieved the ability to read old English as of currently.) And I must say, Its a pretty exciting read, although the way it is written was kinda confusing I will get into that later! The background on where Beowulf has come from was one of my favorites to learn about, very rarely I am given a chance to read less about a story and more about where it originated from. Beowulf’s originals author is unknown, it is a type of telling that has been retold many times in the past to the point where it is sort of like a game of telephone. Where the more it gets repeated, the more words get to switch around, which means we have no clue if the story we currently know is the original to be told. Which I believe is super exciting about this story, it made me think a lot more about this story. It made me wonder a lot about its origins as this story was developed long ago, and how the times have grown, I wonder if this story changed throughout the years.

Beowulf is this strong, very confident young man at the beginning of the poem and honestly throughout the whole thing (of course no longer young by the end). He goes to Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, who’s Mead hall is currently being attacked by a monster named Grendel and offers his help in defeating him. From the very beginning of the story, we can see Beowulf is the type of hero that loves to brag and overdramatize everything in hopes of being viewed as the most powerful, that is until he gets called out by Unferth (who is my personal favorite). Who basically exposes him out of pure jealousy, because he is the same as Beowulf, where they both have a huge ego. Anywho he quickly puts down Unferth with a witty and intelligent response and tells the king that he wants to fight Grendel without any armor or weapons since Grendel himself is not wearing any. I won’t get into any details about the battles since I hope this blog will inspire you to at least check it out. So basically throughout this whole poem, we see Beowulf with his confidence, Hrothgar throwing Beowulf one too many victory parties, and Beowulf becoming king himself. But honestly one of my favorites things about this poem is we get such a big-time skip that we can see how much he has grown, and although he still is overconfident, he is much more selfless and intelligent than before “He was old with years and wisdom, fifty winters, A king-“ (2208-2210). Also, if one battle is not enough for you to read one of the longest poems, there is a total of three monsters Beowulf battles, Grendel, Grendel’s mother, the dragon. My personal favorite is the dragon if you have read it or at least watched the movie (I recommend the poem though) which was your favorite battle scene?

I talked a lot about my favorites with this poem but here is a more detailed list of why I am a bit iffy about this read. Although the characters were interesting, I would have to say my favorite is Unferth, just because of how snarky he is before the first battle and how willing he is to accept Beowulf in the second battle. But just because the characters were fun to read doesn’t really change how hard it was for me to sit down and read this, I really disliked the way it was formatted. I like to read out loud in different voices so I can get experience but due to the way it was formatted the sentence would stop with a period and all of a sudden continue tabbed in the next line still advancing. It took me a lot longer to understand who was talking and what was going on due to the many characters with similar spelled names (so many H’s) So if you also have this problem, but you have a lot more patience than me, than definitely check this poem out. Also, as said previously,, my favorite battle was with the dragon, just because of how Beowulf changed and how everything ended up catching up with him I love a good plot twist. Also as you can see I have two gifs here where its the animated movie of Beowulf and may I just add, that If you want to read Beowulf, maybe also read Grendel too BEFORE watching the movie, I had the horrible chance to watch the film before Grendel and now I can no longer take the characters seriously. Also, the film did my favorite character Unferth dirty. Anywho enough about the film, In the poem, I kinda learned a valuable lesson, where just because you may be confident it does not make you weak to ask for help. I recommend this poem no matter how confusing it may be at times, it was so much fun to discuss, and if you’re interested shoot me an email or write in the comments discussing your favorite and least favorite parts. Thank you for reading!