Wyrd If you believed in fate would you change the way you live your life? Would you worry as much? Would get angry or sad as often? The Anglo-Saxons had many principles to live by and one of those was wyrd, fate. I believe wyrd was the most important ideal to follow. Fate cannot be changed. Since fate cannot be changed, there is no point in having fear of the future because the future is already predestined. Having no fear means having courage, strength, bravery and confidence. Beowulf lived by this in battle. He went in without fear of his destiny and came out a conqueror for most of his life. Beowulf holds fate responsible for his early victories. He believes that God has the power over everything and He determines everyone’s fate. It says in line 455 “Fate goes ever as fate must.” Beowulf was a devout Pagan warrior in which wyrd played an important factor in the Pagan culture. God determined if Beowulf …show more content…
However, I do not believe in fate. I believe it goes against scripture. I believe God gave us free will. For example, when Adam and Eve were in the garden and they had the choice to eat from every tree except one but they chose to eat from the forbidden tree anyway. God has the power to make us follow him and do right but that is not what He wants. He wants us to choose Him because we want to in our hearts. Our actions will determine our ending. I believe that everyone’s fate will be either heaven or hell. Our conduct here on earth is what dictates us getting into heaven. God is the only one to judge and decide that for us. I do not think that wyrd is a ubiquitous principle that people live by today. I think we can see from our actions that we reap what we sew. I believe that the majority of people would agree that you can manipulate your fate exactly or close to how you want
Beowulf affirms this belief when someone got close to the dragon but didn't die; saying "So may a man not marked by fate easily escape exile and woe by the grace of God" (81). This idea of fate is carried through as Beowulf fights the dragon and dies. "That final day was the first time when Beowulf fought and fate denied him glory in battle" again attributing all his previous successes and his ultimate collapse to the power of God.
The story “Beowulf” is an epic poem written by an unknown author. In the story Beowulf, our protagonist, is the strongest man in the world who has to take down three monsters and faces challenges when facing two of them. In the story lof, comitatus, and wyrd is shown in the story and plays an important part of the Beowulf’s culture.
Beowulf, now an old man, says in his final boast, “I’ve never known fear, as a youth I fought in endless battles. I am old, now, but I will fight again” (lines 607-609). Beowulf realizes the dangers of going into battle as an old man, and despite still knowing that his strength and fighting skills were not what they used to be still goes into battle against the ferocious dragon in order to protect his homeland from the villain. Unfortunately, as Beowulf was fighting saw that “for a time (the shield) held, protected Beowulf as he’d planned; then it began to melt, and for the first time in his life that famous prince fought with fate against him, with glory denied him. He knew it, but he raised his sword and struck at the dragon’s scaly hide/And the Geats’ ring-giver did not boast of glorious victories in other wars” (lines 666-671/678). As Beowulf fights the dragon, he comes to realize that he is not going to win and is going to meet his fate. All the battles he had previously fought had him fighting alongside fate, not against it, but now he realized that this is the battle he would not win. Still, Beowulf fights on knowing he would die. He, as stated in the quote, does not seek any pride nor has he in any of his battles and would valiantly fight until his death. These actions Beowulf has portrayed ultimately
Shild could not have "changed his own fate" if it was totally determined ahead of time. But the poet of Beowulf says this, implying that fate was acknowledged in Anglo-Saxon culture as a very important force in the events of people's lives. Yet fate is not totally predetermined.
Many translators of the poem have signaled the ”allusions to the power of fate” and its connection to Christianity (Klaeber, xlviii). The fact is that whether or not Beowulf saw a connection to the concept of fate and a divine power is something that we may never know.
Beowulf is a poem with pagan origins, yet it has many Christian elements. Indeed, the second quotation we are given from this passage assigns fate as the "ruler of every man." A true Christian poet would never assign rule over man to any other than the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Additionally, the gaining of earthly treasures or, specifically the taking of treasure from a defeated enemy, is not an activity that is heroic in the Christian sense.
An epic story is one that combines elements of supernatural powers and heroic deeds with plebeian troubles. In Beowulf , the unknown author paints a typical yet magnificent tale that is one of the great epic chronicles of the Middle Ages. Like the poems of Homer, Beowulf possesses terrible monsters, men with supernatural powers, the search for glory, and deadly defeats. However, this medieval account brings a new element into the folds: the association between established religious forces and personal choices. The concepts of predestination and fate intertwine in this work with the idea of free will.
Anglo-Saxons saw their world completely depending on fate. During battles in Beowulf, the outcome would be decided by fate previous to the battle even commencing. The Anglo-Saxons don’t worry about the outcome of events because they think God decides their fate. He decides who will win, or who will lose and die. Battles will last as long as God decides, and won’t end unless fate has chosen a winner. Individuals don’t affects the actions that take place. All deaths that occur are based on fate, and God’s decisions.
Though Beowulf was god-like and he was able to be successful when faced with decisions and adversity, he eventually succumbed to the destructive forces of nature and threw his nation into conflict. As aforementioned, Beowulf’s battle with the dragon depicts unpreventable death and destruction that afflicts everybody, his last battle also symbolizes that even the most seemingly perfect people are chained to hostile acts of nature and fate. Beowulf’s death is not a product of pride, it was a result of his altruistic nature to do good, however, his death forecasts war in his country as described by Wiglaf when ordering a messenger to tell the Geats of Beowulf’s death, “And this people can expect fighting, once/ The Franks, and the Frisians, have heard that our king/ Lies dead.” (Beowulf 2910-2913). Beowulf’s main purpose was to do good, and though killing the dragon was an act of goodness, he traded in his life for an act of good, however his death brought the large possibility of war to his
Fate seems to defy humanity at every turn. A man may have his life planned out to the last second, but then some random force intervenes and he dies the second after he has completed his life plan. Some believe in fate, believing that our lives are predetermined from the moment we are born. Other people believe that everything is random, the result of some god rolling the dice in a universal poker game. Still other people believe that each and every person is in total control of his or her destiny, every step of the way. Who is to say which viewpoint is false? Every culture has a unique perception of the role of fate in our lives, and no group has the "right answer," simply a
Before each and every battle that Beowulf takes on, there is always a specific section that speaks about fate and what is to come with death. Gruesome descriptions of battle and fate ending in death is brought about extremely casually and often. When Beowulf first meets King Hrothgar to help him protect his kingdom from Grendel, he immediately tells the king, “Whichever one death fells / must deem it a just judgement by God” (Heaney ll. 440-441). Since this epic poem was composed within an era of blooming Christianity, it is shown that Beowulf is fully leaving his life within the hands of God. Beowulf believes that only God has the power to take a life when he believes it is their time; persuading the audience that it is right to fall into the same belief, causing more of a major impact on the world today. Once God
The nature of fate also made a major impact upon the sense of doom and death. Fate played a major role in pagan society during this time period and this is demonstrated when, in his old age, Beowulf goes to fight the dragon and it says, “That noble prince would end his day on earth, soon, would leave his brief life, but would take the dragon with him”. This means that Beowulf accepts that he will die eventually and is leaving it up to fate whether or not he kills the dragon or if he is killed so, this allows him to fight with no fear just like he did against Grendel. During this time period life expectancy was much shorter which led to the sense that death was always right there waiting. Couple the short life span with the chance of war or disease killing you and life became a thing to cherish with death being the only thing a person was guaranteed to as even infants died before they could even do anything. Disease that today would be no problem for our modern medicine would wipe out entire towns and villages. With the wrong luck everything you worked for in your life could be wiped out and there is nothing that could be done.
The idea of fate ruled the lives of the pagans. Their belief was that you were born with a fate, and there was nothing that could change this destiny. This idea becomes apparent in Beowulf several times. As Beowulf is dying he refers to his leaving this earth as just part of his destiny when he says that "[m]y days have gone by as fate willed" (Norton 1604). The idea of fate is called on again when Beowulf asks Wiglaf to succeed him as king of the Geats. He tells Wiglaf that he would have given the honor to his son, if he had one, but fate did not allow it. We see a reference to fate a final time when Wiglaf speaks of Beowulf after his death. He offers that as much as Beowulf's people tried to convince him to leave well enough alone, to allow the monster to live on forever, there was no changing Beowulf's destiny. Beowulf's "[f]ate, and his will, [w]ere too strong" (Norton 1611). Fate is clearly a non-Christian idea, and its presence in the poem helps the case for Beowulf being a pagan story.
One of the greatest debates in human history is fate vs free will and does fate even exist. It is a question that has been asked for centuries across many different cultures (Dennin 2016). Fate still has a impact on people today. The modern day argument isn't about being a force for good or evil like in Beowulf's culture, it is whether or not fate even exists. Everyone claims to know the answer but no one truly does. In the anglo saxon culture fate was the common belief. Not as many people now believe in fate as they did in Beowulf’s times but “52 percent of Americans say that they do believe in fate while only 29 percent do not believe in fate” (Moore, 2015). This means that fate is not as big of a deal nowadays then it was back then. Fates meaning and importance has changed but it still affects people's views and beliefs today.
The idea of fame and fate was also evident in Beowulf. After 50 long years of nothing, Beowulf just sat at his throne with fame, but he knew this fame wasn’t the same as it was back in the past, when he killed Grendel and his mother. He wanted this fame back which becomes one of the reasons to go and slay the dragon, later on in the story. When the dragon destroyed much of Beowulf’s land, Beowulf became angry and hostile towards the dragon. He desired for revenge and vengeance, which again is another reason for his action to slay the dragon. In a way he used fame and vengeance to motivate his plan to slay the dragon. All these things were influenced as pagan ideas. Throughout the story Beowulf struggled with his Christian ideology while Pagan ideas clouded his judgment. Since he was human it was difficult for him avoid the pagan ideas as they were so easy to practice, while following God’s righteous yet restricted path.