Heroes In Sir Gawain And Beowulf

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In today's society, people love and praise stories about a hero saving the day and always doing what is fair and right. Attributes of these so called heroes can be seen in specific stories such as Sir Gawain and Beowulf. In the tales of Sir Gawain, he is a knight of the famous King Arthur and is taking up the task to defend the king and embark on wild and deadly adventures (Bulfinch). He ends up failing his king by trying to save his own life and is forgiven by Arthur. Beowulf is the manly man that we all think of. In his story, a monster named Grendel is attacking and killing his people. When he finds out this information, he takes up the task of defending the people he cares about and goes to fight Grendel and killing him. Though Sir Gawain…show more content…
He sees that Grendel is an unmerciful monster who is killing for fun and knows that he must be stopped even if that means his life could come to an end. While Sir Gawain goes on a great adventure to serve his king, he discovers that he has to end his life to complete his task and does all he can to save his life. The women in the house that he is staying in gives him this magical belt that prevents him from dying. Gawain even lies to the women to get the belt and when he faces the green knight and discovers that it is Arthur, the king exposes his selfish ways and acts which shows Gawain's true intentions. Seeing Beowulf make the initiative to go and defend others, not for his own benefit, but for others lives proves that he is a true hero and selfless man. However, Gawain is a close friend and knight of Arthur, but when he has to lay down his life for his king, he takes the easy way out and tries to save…show more content…
When Beowulf discovers where Grendel is hiding, he decides to go straight for him and not waste anytime. What he also does, is he doesn’t take any weapons or armor with him and promises to defeat Grendel with his bare fists. It is crazy and almost seen as insane, but he runs straight into it without worrying about himself and is successful by ripping Grendel's arms off with only his hands (Geurber). It seems as if Beowulf views armor or weapons as cowardice things to use or hide behind. The setting of Sir Gawain's story is the time of knights and chivalry, where people rode horses with heavy and large pieces of armor with swords and shield. Gawain saw his identity in being a knight and having that armor, but I think that held him back from becoming a true hero. He needed that magic belt to survive the Green Knight, and while he knew he had to upkeep his end of the bargain, he needed other things to save
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