Fate In Beowulf

Beowulf: A New Telling by Robert Nye is about a character named Beowulf who has to fight evil by using strength, but by also using cleverness. Beowulf’s name means “bee hunter” and Beowulf loved bees. In the story a hall is built it is called Hall Heorot. “By day it towered above men’s heads like a second sun, so bright were it’s walls and roofs”(p. 5). Once the hall is made, a monster comes and eats people at night.

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.

“All of us have bad and good luck. The man who persists through the bad luck - who who keep right on going - is the man who is there when the good luck comes - and is ready to receive it” (Robert Collier). Beowulf perfectly demonstrates this quote because throughout the story he has to push through the bad luck and be there ready for the good. Beowulf is a classic work of literature from Anglo-Saxon times. The book is filled with a sense of impending death and sudden change which leads to a very unique mood for the book.The sense of impending death and sudden change is shown by the sense of inevitable doom and the role fate plays.

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.

I believe that some things are fate and some are free will. This means everything has a small mixture of both. Grendel, in my eyes, has accepted the fact that he is bad because he is a descendant of Cain. This does not have to be the fate of Grendel, but because he has believed that he is a bad for so long it is now his fate. Beowulf on the other hand has an abundance of free will. He chose to fight Grendel knowing it would be a hard battle. He could have let the fate of Grendel killing the townsmen erupt, but instead he took the problem into his own hands. Although I do believe Beowulf is dealing with free will, I believe his armour was put on him by fate. Beowulf was protected enough to save the town. His armour was fate, but his

Fate intervenes, saves Beowulf's life, and helps him kill monsters many times. Beowulf believes fate saved him in his battle with the sea monsters saying “A monster seized me drew me swiftly towards the bottom... fate let me find its heart with my sword” (Beowulf 286). Since the monsters are evil and Beowulf is good, fate saved him and let him live on. Beowulf himself believes that it is fate that the monsters he kills die at his hands. “I swam in the blackness of night, hunting monsters... and killing them one by one, the death they have earned, the fate they had earned” (Beowulf 155). Since Beowulf is so successful as a warrior he believes he owes all his achievements to fate.

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.

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

Beowulf: A New Telling is a book for people that need reassurance that light will overcome darkness and that we need to accept that we have some darkness inside of us, then our weaknesses can become our strengths. Beowulf has to face many faces of evil, including Grendel, the cruel slimy creature who murders Beowulf’s friends and She, the wife of Cain and malicious monster that lives at the bottom of a pool of blood. He becomes king of Geats and is famous all throughout the land.

Every man must expose himself to the reality that death is unescapable. There is no amount of human strength, shiny armor nor treasured sword that can always prevent the inevitable. Any character in literature that is being portrayed immortal is fiction. Beowulf as often as not regards himself as the one who can conquer all. Beowulf like others is ignorant towards his own mortality. Even though, Beowulf is successful in his earliest battles he still remains careless to the understanding that he will die. The concept of mortality was something Beowulf was faced with time and time again. Beowulf had to discover how accepting one’s fate can later become the most rewarding.

Beowulf is one of the greatest epics from early British literature history we have managed to salvage, and amidst the tales of brave heroes and mighty battles, there lies an interwoven theme of isolation and death. These two plagues to the human mind and body walk together in a correlated marriage within Beowulf’s many episodes. Death is an obvious theme; the alpha and omega of the poem are grandeur funerals (Beowulf, l. 26-52, 3114-3155) and loss is littered throughout Beowulf’s journey. Isolation, however, is a theme that is directly related to the death inside of Beowulf’s world, and needs further examination as to how and why. It seems that the evil creatures that fall to the hands of our mighty hero indulge this theory, but this thematic duo take more than just the lives of the monsters. Isolation followed by death sweeps up innocent characters as well, including Beowulf himself.

Beowulf set his ego aside and hurdled into the face of danger in order to defeat a greater evil and liberate the people of Heorot from the demonic grasp of Grendel. The crew aboard the Challenger brought America together and helped us insure the safety of future astronauts. Tom pushed his body to the edge to live the life he dreamed of. Risks are imperative in life. Even beginning life, they are our instinct. We learn to crawl despite the bruises on our knees. We learn to walk no matter how many falls we endure. As we become further aware of the world around us, somewhere along the way, we experience failure; at that point, many people attempt to eradicate most risks from their life. But where would we be without our sense of exploration, our willingness to try new things? In order to push one’s boundaries, move forward as a society, and give purpose to life people must be willing to take risks.

In the translation of the poem Beowulf by Burton Raffel, the oppositional ideals especially regarding heroism in Christianity and the Anglo-Saxon culture creates a powerful distance between the two, increasing the prevention of Beowulf’s Christian audience from relating to Beowulf himself. Instances of Christian references in the translation are repetitively contradicted by the actions and motivations of Beowulf’s characters. The heroic values of the Anglo-Saxon culture are so much more conceited than those of Christianity. The Beowulf translator drives apart the two cultures by presenting Anglo-Saxon and Christian ideals that are paradoxical. The characters in both Beowulf and The Bible undergo similar moral tests and prove to hold contradictory morals, influences, and motivations through their words and actions. This opposition between the ideals of the two cultures weaken their relationship as well as the sense of familiarity to some of the Christian audience.

Fate is often a topic of interest in many literary works, as it provides an insight to readers as to how a person’s success or demise can be credited to their own doing or to the world’s chaotic web of tragedy that afflicts those at random. In Beowulf, pagan belief describes fate as an affliction through unmerciful forces of death and destruction that befall people at random. Actions and events that occur around us are mainly out of our control, though we can influence them at times, yet, we are susceptible to the world’s destruction, death, and failure. For these reasons, I believe: nature is hostile and uncontrollable at times, and that Beowulf can be described as a failure due to his inability to prevent conflict that befalls his country after his death.

Beowulf had just won the battle against his son, the dragon. Beowulf killed his son by pulling the heart out. Due to this battle, Beowulf was severely injured. He was immediately brought to the healer (doctor), but the healer couldn’t heal Beowulf. So, Beowulf was brought back to his castle. Beowulf laid there waiting for his day to die.