Comparative Essay On Beowulf By Seamus Heaney

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Beowulf is a poem, with an unknown author, that is about a hero who rips monsters apart with his bare hands. However, the most modern translation is by Seamus Heaney. The Anglo-Saxons orally passed down stories, such as Beowulf, before they learned to read and write from Christian monks spreading the word of Jesus Christ. The widely held belief is that the original author of the poem is a Christian monk because it has symbols of Christianity and God when the idea of God had not yet existed; the only religion was paganism. Hollywood got its hands on Beowulf and recreated the poem in 2007. The movie changed many of the central ideas of the poem into a Hollywood production. The change is apparent in the ideas that Beowulf is more man, how Beowulf becomes king, and Beowulf’s final fight with the dragon. The first difference between the movie and the poem is that Beowulf is more of a man and less of a hero in the movie. In the poem, Beowulf is a hero. He has no flaws, he is strong, he is respectful, he honors his men, and he has all the traits of a hero. However, in the movie he has many flaws. He does not actually defeat Grendel’s mother; instead, he sleeps with her gaining all of the powers she promised him; he has a concubine; and Beowulf wants to be a man…show more content…
In the poem, the dragon is angry because a thief steals a treasure from it’s den and starts destroying the countryside trying to find it. The dragon’s destruction enrages Beowulf; and he sets out, with a small group of his men, to fight the dragon. However, Beowulf cannot defeat the dragon alone. He needs Wiglaf to stab the dragon in the stomach to weaken it. This gives time for Beowulf to recover from the neck wound he sustained during the battle and finish the dragon off with his hunting knife. Earlier in the battle the dragon bites Beowulf on the neck. Normally, this is nothing for Beowulf;

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