In this essay I hope to state clearly some of the popularly mentioned themes running through the poem, and to carefully delineate many aspects of the author’s style.
“Many critics feel that the speech of Hrothgar between lines 1700 and 1784 encapsulates the moral of the poem….’He does not know the worse – till inside him great arrogance grows and spreads’” (Shippey 38). Is the theme of the poem that pride kills? Hrothgar’s ominous words do come back to haunt the hero more than once. Beowulf