Beowulf 16
In the epic Beowulf, the only complete Old English epic that has survived to present day, the protagonist Beowulf fights three significant battles. During these three battles against Grendel, Grendel's mother, and the dragon, Beowulf uses his strength and bravery to defeat each of the foes encountered. Beowulf uses several of his character traits to help him as he conquers his enemies. When one is analyzing a story such as this, one must break the story down to its fundamental levels. On the most fundamental level, the battles Beowulf fights vary in several ways. One of these ways is the revenge factor. Although revenge is a factor in some of his battles, he continues to be victorious. So one has to ask oneself, does revenge make the battles "unpure"? If so, the battles differ in many ways, on different levels. Thus, each battle differs in the fact that each successive battle is less pure and more difficult. The first battle Beowulf versus Grendel contains some of the elements aforementioned. The fight is being fought as r
evenge against Grendel for all the horror he has wreaked upon the people. Thus the revenge factor comes into play. Beowulf also has no aid and simply uses his strength and cunning against Grendel. So in fundamental analyzation, one can see that this indeed is the most "pure" battle he fights because although revenge is involved, he wins with no aid, and uses nothing but strength and skill to win. As far as difficulty is concerned, in the story this battle is described as a relatively easy one for Beowulf. Third, is the battle versus the Dragon. Though this story follows the inverse relationship between purity and difficulty, the device through which such is accomplished changes sharply. In this instance about fifty years have passed since the last battle. Beowulf is monarch and leader of his people now. A traditional adventure story might have stopped after the second battle, but this story uses the third battle as a device to show what happens to a hero as he becomes monarch. As far as purity and difficulty are concerned,
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 695
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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