Sacrifice In The Short Story 'The Four Dragons'

As humans, we all possess great qualities. We develop memories that we can cherish forever. Hopes and dreams help us strive to do great things. However, we all have our demons that we all tend to conceal. The famous poem “Beowulf” is renowned for the battles against Beowulf and many monsters. The battles in the poem pose as metaphorical battles. Beowulf defeating the monsters represent him trying to overcome his demons. The last battle was between him and a dragon. To the reader’s surprise, he lost the battle. The dragon represents Beowulf’s greatest demon. Despite the dragons that Beowulf faced that are external, my dragons are more internal.

epic poems, dragons play major antagonistic roles. The foe of Beowulf and the two dragons in The

Joseph Campbell dedicated his whole life researching patterns that appear in almost every hero story or movie. He discovered that there are a few basics stages that just about every hero character goes through. This cycle is called “the monomyth” or more commonly known as “the hero’s journey.” This paper will compare and contrast Beowulf and Shrek and how each fits into the monomyth. Every story that involves a hero will subsequently follow the concept of the Heroes Journey.

This is shown in the third and final battle as Beowulf sacrifices his life for the prosperity of the Geat nation. The dragon in this scenario encompasses extreme greed and selfishness. In the poem, a wretched man steals a golden goblet from the treasure that the dragon was protecting. After discovering that someone had stolen a piece of the treasure, the dragon awoke and “began to belch out flames / and burn bright homesteads; there was a hot glow / that scared everyone, for the vile sky-winger / would leave nothing alive in his wake” (2311-2315). The dragon becomes enraged with greed over his possessions that he must avenge his stolen goblet. It is in this third battle that the poet describes why the hero cannot demonstrate these treacherous traits. Beowulf seeks vengeance for his Geat people: “My own kith and kin avenged” (2479). Just as Grendel’s mother, Beowulf seeks to avenge his kin in cold blood.

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.

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.

Thesis: In Beowulf, cruelty is used as a motivator, but also as a symbol of humanity, or the lack thereof. Cruelty, and the intent behind it, is what makes the heroes and the villains one and the same in Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf.

Beowulf is from a time where heros never die. They would live on through stories. There would be amazing tales, poems recited, and songs sung about what the hero had done. To be a hero you had to follow the Anglo-Saxon codes. Which meant showing respect to those who had raised you and in turn helping them when they are in need. It means proving yourself and doing what was expected of you, even when it is something like dieing for your people. To live on through stories, Beowulf fought because of his duty, for glory, and as a sacrifice.

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.

In the epic poem Beowulf, there is an obvious distinction between good and evil. The hero and his foes play roles that are commonly associated with Anglo-Saxon literature. The lines are clearly drawn and expressed in the poem. As the story moves, the reader cannot mistake the roles being played, based on the characterizations in the epic, one recognizes each character for their purpose and place.

“No better king had ever lived, no prince so mild, no man so open to his people, so deserving of praise.” This is an ultimate description of the heroic events of Beowulf, an old Anglo-Saxon poem about a warrior who battles and destroys three horrifying monsters. Although written long ago, the emotions expressed within this work, emotions of bravery, valor, and ethics still speak to us centuries later. The anonymous author of the poem convinces us through the masterful use of various literary elements that emphasize its meaning and message. Conflict, imagery and setting are three literary elements that contribute to the effectiveness of the poem.

The story begins with the description of a deep night and two men bent by their lonely fire. These men are speaking about a strange, mysterious creature, which seems to ruin everything on its way. They are talking about a dreadful dragon, which is described with much detail: “This dragon, they say his eyes are fire. His breath a white gas; you can see him bum across the dark lands”, “Passing, the black brunt of its shoulder smashed the remaining horse and rider a hundred feet against the side of a boulder, wailing, wailing, the dragon shrieking, the fire all about, around, under it, a pink, yellow, orange sun-fire with

This theme is best shown through the lyric “I'm the one at sail, I’m the master of my sea” This lyric best encapsulates the theme because it uses a metaphor to compare the how that you are in charge of your life and you shouldn't let what others think, bring you down. Imagine Dragons is saying that everyone is in charge of their own future, and they can be there own “Master” of their

Thus far, Beowulf has killed two man-like monsters. Beowulf’s last battle with a dragon is the final substantial fantastic element in this epic poem. W.P. Ker, a nineteenth-century critic, asserts the dragons are

Reading through Beowulf I began to compare it to the last great epic I read, Homer’s Odyssey. While the Odyssey and Beowulf are each examples of both historic and modern ideas of heroism, the acts of Beowulf’s hero seem to fit better within its context.