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Transl. Seamus HeaneyA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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The world of Beowulf might seem at first to be a place of pure brawn. Beowulf can swim the ocean for weeks at a time, dive down into the mere for a full day without taking a breath, and wrestle monsters to death with his bare hands. However, these tales of superhuman power rest on a fragile structure. While the poem lauds heroism, its deeper concern is with the leadership that can spring from overvaluing it—and the risks and doubts of that leadership.
Hrothgar makes this point well in his speech of guidance to Beowulf:
Sometimes [God] allows the mind of a man
of distinguished birth to follow its bent,
grants him fulfilment and felicity on earth
and forts to command in his own country […]
until the man in his unthinkingness
forgets that it will ever end for him.
[…]The whole world
conforms to his will, he is kept from the worst
until an element of overweening
enters him and takes hold (119).
Heroism, Hrothgar explains, cannot be taken for granted, or considered exclusively one’s own virtue. The broader structures of society (and of a hero’s soul) can’t function simultaneously with this singular ability. Though heroism can confer glory, its rightful role is in relation to the culture it protects.
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