Shield was still thriving when his time came / and he crossed over into the Lord’s keeping. / His warrior band did what he bate them / when he laid down the law among the Danes: / the shouldered him out to the sea’s flood, / the chief they revered who had long ruled them. / A ring-whorled prow rode in the harbour, / ice-clad, outbound, a craft for a prince. / They stretched their beloved lord in his boat, / laid out by the mast, amidships, / the great ring-giver. Far-fetched treasures / were piled upon him, and precious gear. (26-37) This uses the literary technique of foreshadow. This foreshadows the funeral of the main protagonist, Beowulf. This passage is significant because…show more content… This passage helps establish how people see Beowulf as god like. It shows how the times were, how they believed someone could have the strength of thirty men. It shows that they are gullible and are willing to believe a lot. They are also so hopeful of finding a hero to save them, that they want to exaggerate that much just so that people will believe they have a chance of being saved. They want to find a hero so bad that they could take an ordinary brave man and exaggerate his strengths to give hope.
“Well, friend Unferth, you have had your say / about Breca and me. But it was mostly beer / that was doing the talking. The truth is this: / when the going was so heavy in those high waves, / I was the strongest swimmer of all. / We’d been children together and we grew up / daring ourselves to outdo each other, /….. Some ocean creature / pulled me to the bottom. Pinioned fast / and swathed in its grip, I was granted one / final chance: my sword plunged / and the ordeal was over. Through my own hands, / the fury of battle had finished off the…show more content… This part is significant because it shows how religious he is, but also how arrogant he is. It also shows how he is willing to put his complete trust in faith. He was willing to not use armor, which some may say is foolish, but in that time it was considered honorable. This also shows how the times were, how sheer stupidity could be taken as bravery. This offers us an inside look on how society functioned in those days and how it influenced peoples