Beowulf is our superhero in this story but only if our hero bragged about all his accomplishments. I say this because in the story Beowulf says, “No one else could do what I mean to, here, no man but me could hope to defeat this monster.” This here alone shows us a glimpse of the cocky attitude Beowulf has and this shows us further how he sees himself and others. By him saying that he is the only man that could hope to defeat the monster is telling us that Beowulf sees himself as the strongest of all people and that leads to the Kanye West I am better than everyone line he gives us. I will give it to him he does do some heroic things but after he says something or shows us something that makes us reflect back on whether he is an actual hero or just trying to make himself look good for all the people. This is like if I gave a homeless man money and told a bunch of people about the deed I did. Most people would think wow that’s so nice, but our critical thinkers at ASU Prep would say well it must not be that special because if you do something out of the goodness of your heart you won’t go around boasting about what you did for such and such.
The thing with Beowulf is that he seems motivated to do all these heroic things just so he can go around telling people all his stores. While I can’t really knock on him for this too hard because I have done things like he has in order to boost my standings with certain people and maybe hope that would change the way they see me. In life I don’t think he can live if he isn’t the center of attention to the people. I believe Beowulf was asked and tasked with taking down Grendel because of the mass amounts of people Grendel has killed. If we are to think about why Beowulf took on this challenge it fits in with the whole idea of building his image up and it all being about him. Beowulf knows that Grendel has been raining hell upon the land for many years and that if he killed him that his reputation would skyrocket. Further on in the story once Grendel is dead Beowulf feels that in order to avenge the countless number of lives lost he needs to murder Grendel’s mother as well. And he does so by fighting her in a cave and kills her with a sword he finds and then sees Grendel in the cave as well and chops his head off. He swims back to shore and now you can probably guess. Yep, it’s all confetti and hero chants from here on. So to sum up Beowulf’s motivations; simply put, be the hero that everyone will tell their kids about and so on.
Beowulf and challenges. They go together perfectly like the cat and his hat. No but seriously he will never back down from any challenge because as we know he can handle anything. Beowulf is everyone favorite hero and if were to back down from a challenge that he deemed to be too much or felt as if he couldn’t prevail against it, it would be catastrophic. One the people would lose hope of being saved against any threat and the other would be people losing hope in Beowulf. And a loss of hope in Beowulf leads him to lose his title of being the hero which he would maintain regardless of the cost. Beowulf says,“I come to proffer my wholehearted help and counsel. I can show the wise Hrothgar a way to defeat his enemy and find respite– if any respite is to reach him, ever.” This is Beowulf telling himself that he can kill and end Grendel. He saw this “challenge” as something he can do with ease. Another example of why he has to stand up to challenges the way he does is the fact that the ruler of Denmark; Hrothgar believes in Beowulf and even calls him the protector of his people. Hrothgar said, “Then the grey-haired treasure-giver was glad; far-famed in battle, the prince of Bright-Danes and keeper of his people counted on Beowulf, on the warrior’s steadfastness and his word.”
Well Beowulf would fit in perfectly in our world because we have a lot of big name people who just do things for the attention they will receive by the public who really fall for their little charade. All throughout the story we just hear about all the things Beowulf did and how is a hero. He reminds of people who try to fish for compliments by trying to point out something about themselves. It works with him telling all these stories so he can basically hint for people to see him as a true hero but he gets something more out of it if he makes them realize that, Also, acknowledging that makes him gain more happiness because the words are coming out of your mouth that he is a hero, all Beowulf did was tell a story. Basically in summary Beowulf is an example of all our egocentric people in the world. cough cough Kanye cough cough.
