Archetypes In Beowulf

“A hero is someone who, in spite of weakness, doubt or not always knowing the answers, goes ahead and overcomes anyway”-Joseph Campbell. Stories have so much power connect you to another world and teach you lessons that are needed throughout history. Archetypes give the story a focal point and shape the lesson the author is trying to get across. When ideals get embedded into stories, usually it’s when the hero does something noble and valiant so they want their readers to follow in his footsteps. The Anglo-Saxon Beowulf and Medieval Christian King Arthur display many archetypes and ideals to shape the story and make it exciting. The Beowulf and King Arthur storytellers use archetypes to create stories with suspense and have their heroes display values of loyalty to their respective listeners.

The Anglo-Saxons’ cultures and traditions are rooted in their beliefs of the perfect hero. Their ideal hero has many key characteristics influenced by their culture including courage, strength, bravery, thick skin, loyalty, humbleness, and the ability to create strong trustworthy friendships. Beowulf is an epic poem that exhibits the ideal Anglo-Saxon hero. The Anglo-Saxon traditions illustrated in Beowulf accurately represent the Anglo-Saxon traditions of the time period. This is accomplished through the distinct correlation of heroic characteristics between Beowulf and the culture’s traditional depiction of an Anglo-Saxon hero.

Archetypes are the foundation, walls, and roof to a good story. They build on each other to explain a story in a way the reader can relate to. Beowulf was originally composed in Old English in the 6th century; although there is no known author, the more modern version was translated by Burton Rafel. This story has three main archetypes as such: The Journey, The Task, and The Battle Between Good and Evil.

Throughout the ages the tale of the epic hero has been subject to change, as writers found new inspiration and allowed the art of storytelling to evolve. With it, there was the change of the portrayal of the epic hero, and I will be illustrating this through an analysis of the epic heroes from Beowulf, suggested to have been first composed between the 8th and 11th century, and Macbeth, composed early in the 17th century. It is important to note the time difference, and all the change that time would have brought to social structures in written fiction. The tales of epic heroes are a good way of researching historic civilizations, as they play a role in reflecting the ethics and morals of civilizations and always have. Beowulf and Macbeth play a similar role as the works of the Greek poet Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey or tales from other cultures. It is partially through the differences in character portrayals and roles within the plot that someone can understand the morals of those before us and

Lucy Deadman explores the existence of archetypes across all literary text types and how they revisit from our childhood by pressing replay in our lives.

Beowulf, the wonderful--yet very tragic--epic poem expresses the true importance of heroes and outcasts within any given myth. A hero is a character who is admired for their courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities; while an outcast is a character who is separated from society due to a physical impairment or an emotional or physiological realization that makes him/her different. These characters are also known as archetypal characters. Some of these characters include Beowulf, Wiglaf, Grendel, and Grendel’s mother--all of which are essential to the completion of Beowulf. For a myth to be successful, an outcast and hero must be present because each plays a significant role in the storyline.

In the epic poems of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Beowulf, the role of heroes is significant. However, the epic poems differ drastically on these topics. The epic poems of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Beowulf share many things yet differ in the qualities of the heroes; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight defines heroism as imperfect, mortal and humble, as delineated by the actions of Sir Gawain at the Green Chapel, while Beowulf defines heroism as being “larger-than-life” and proud, as shown by Beowulf’s encounter with Unferth.

Epic heroes are brave and noble characters who people admire for their great achievements. In John Gardner’s Grendel, Gardner portrays Beowulf as a stranger who defeats Grendel by ripping off his arm, whereas in Seamus Heaney’s translation of the epic poem Beowulf, he is characterized as hero because of his overall strength and courage. The first person point of view in Grendel emphasizes how Beowulf is superior, yet he shares some characteristics with Grendel. The third person point of view in Beowulf commends Beowulf for being a hero, but neglects to emphasize how his actions falsely represent his true selfishness. After considering the tone and point of view in Grendel by John Gardner and the Anglo-Saxon values showed in the translation of Beowulf by Seamus Heaney, Beowulf is not an epic hero because he sacrifices other Danes lives in order to kill Grendel and results to use of revenge.

Long-form poems Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight stem from two distinct time periods containing distinguished cultures, values, and ideologies. The Anglo-Saxon age, where Beowulf takes place, was a melting pot of Christian and pagan values. Epic battles, gruesome challenges, ideas of fate and destiny, and personal pride defined their heroism. Centuries later, in the Age of Chivalry, heroes possessed humility, respect, honesty, and integrity. Beowulf and Sir Gawain represent their cultures’ ideals respectively. Beowulf’s masculine demeanour and physical prowess, contrasted with Sir Gawain’s nuanced mental self consciousness, demonstrate an incoherent, often polarizing depiction of Old English heroism, in which neither protagonist fully possesses the values of an ideal hero.

The epic poem Beowulf by Seamus Heaney uses character archetypes to explore the values embodied in Anglo-Saxon culture.

In the Anglo Saxon epic poem Beowulf, written down by two Christian monks, archetypes are highly prevalent and the hero archetype is filled by the main character Beowulf, this position being filled by Beowulf is very heavily throughout the book. One example of this position being filled is his close following to the hero’s quest. Throughout the book he closely follows many of the stages of the hero's quest such as his repeated cycle of fighting evil after defeating it already, we first see this with grendel, then grendel's mom and then the dragon, in the hero's quest the hero constantly has to fight off evil as he is the only one who is able to do it. The first quote in which we see this fighting of evil happen is “So times were pleasant for the people there/ until finally one, a fiend

Beowulf is an epic poem whose earliest surviving copy was written in 1000 A.D. The story consists of three thousand one hundred and eighty two lines that follow the life of the title character. The original author of the epic poem is unknown mainly because it started as a verbal tale passed down orally through the ages. Finally someone wrote it down in a document now called the Nowell Codex. The epic tale is centered on Beowulf and his actions in an adventure to repay a debt owed by his father to Hrothgar, a Danish king. A gargantuan monster that is terrorizing Hrothgar’s mead hall is Beowulf’s target and Beowulf sails across the sea to aid his father’s

"The incitement to violence depends on the total transvaluation of the ordinary values. By a single stroke, the most criminal acts must be converted to heroic and meritorious deeds" (Gardner 117). Red Horse, Hrothulf’s adviser, describes perfectly the black and white Anglo-Saxon culture that leaves Grendel confused and alone. John Gardner’s novel, Grendel, pushes the idea of a world of gray where neither hero nor villain exists, everyone a combination of damning and redeeming traits. Although Gardner includes some elements of Anglo-Saxon culture such as boasts and raids upon other nations, he satirizes them so they are viewed as meek attempts at comfort in a world where everything is meaningless.

What makes a hero? Bravery? Sacrifice? Strength? Beowulf and Sir Gawain both exemplified these heroic traits. Beowulf was a hero of the Geatish people of ancient Sweden. When the protagonist heard the plea of King Hrothgar, Beowulf undeterredly sailed across the sea to vanquish the beast called Grendel. Presently, after Grendel was slain, he proceeded to slay Grendel’s mother, and later in life, a fire breathing dragon who would inflict a mortal wound upon Beowulf. Sir Gawain is a more chivalrous hero who offers his opponent a chance to honorably defend himself in a duel. Surprisingly, he loses, but the Green Knight gives him a year and a day to live. During that time, Gawain lives an honorable and a respectable life until they meet again.

Throughout the history of fictional writing, cultural values of certain time periods have been expressed and implemented through the depiction of the heroes’ experiences on their journeys and the knowledge they gain by the quest’s end. For example, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a chivalric romance written in the Late Middle Ages, Gawain epitomizes a knight with the characteristics that knights from the Late Middle Ages were expected to possess according to the requirements outlined in the rules of chivalry, such as honor and valor. Likewise, Beowulf, the hero of the folk epic Beowulf, embodies the qualities of an exemplary hero as well as king. Therefore, in both stories, the reader encounters a heroic character that is presented with traits that Anglo-Saxons and the Middle English valued in their culture through their stories’ monomyths, a concept of similar and structural sequences that can be applied to many stories, created by Joseph Campbell. Some of these values are carried from the Early to Late Middle Ages and can be seen through the works of both Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Beowulf.