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Hero In Beowulf

Decent Essays

Aristotle had once said that “Men are marked from the moment of birth to rule or be ruled”. (Littrell, “Aristotle”, 2016). Each trait that one must have to be a Hero is in the following: The hero must be of noble birth, the heroes story must arouse fear and empathy to keep the reader interested and entertained by what could happen happen next, the hero must be intelligent so that he may learn from his mistakes, and lastly the hero must be faced with a very serious decision that he must make. All of these traits are what all four of these characters in these books, stories and plays have in order to be a hero.
Having a noble birth is important when it comes to being a hero. Having a noble birth shows high qualities of courage, honor and generosity. …show more content…

The fight between Achilles and Hector causes fear and empathy in the Iliad because as the readers we knew that a fight was going to happen between Achilles and Hector and that one of the two were about to be killed. In Beowulf we felt empathy for him as readers because he had to risk his own life to kill the horrendous monster Grendel that no other warrior had the courage to do. Beowulf was everyones only hope since the monster had been attacking his people for over twelve years and he decided to finally put it to a stop. But in the end we find that Beowulf has to fight a dragon that ends up killing him leading to a very sad ending. Hamlet another story that we as the readers feel empathy and fear for due to his uncle King Claudius killing his father King Hamlet. Prince Hamlet had been tore up about the death of his father along with not knowing what actually happened to him until a ghost who claimed that he was his father in his past life accompanied him. The ghost tells Hamlet that he must revenge his death and kill King Claudius. Throughout the entire play we watched as Prince Hamlet does what the ghost has asked him to do to lead up to his revenge of his father's death which later lead to many of his loved ones plus his own death. In the end all four of these characters went down with a hard fight which leads to them …show more content…

In the Iliad Achilles had been often aware of his mistakes but still continued with his plans. For instance, after Achilles fights Hector and defeats him Achilles ties Hector's body to the back of his chariot to humiliate Hector before tossing Hector's body onto a garbage heap. Later after Hector's brother Paris finds out about Hector’s death, he goes after Achilles and shoots him in the heel and kills him. Hector on the other hand proved to be very respectful to whomever he had been fighting and admits his mistakes. For example, Hector makes two fateful decisions. In the first decision, Hector disregards Poulydamas's advice and keeps the Trojans encamped on the plain of Troy. This allowed Achilles counterattack on the Trojans. Secondly, Confident that he can withstand Achilles on his own, Hector waits outside the walls of Troy. When Hector's courage fails him he starts running away from Achilles. Hector later on accepted his fate and fought Achilles but lost. Beowulf had been another character that learns from his mistakes even with his intelligence. After Beowulf kills the monster Grendel he believes he has the strength to defeat the Dragon. He and his relative Wiglaf sneak into the cave where Beowulf successfully kills the beast but does not come out alive. Therefore, Beowulf's taking on a challenge that he knew he could not complete and

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