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    Beowulf

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    annie
    Beowulf should not have fought the dragon for several reasons. He was too old, being over 70 years old after ruling for 50 years. As an aging king without heirs, he should have let younger warriors handle the dragon threat. His death would leave his people without a leader and make them vulnerable to attacks from neighboring rival kingdoms. However, proud Beowulf refused to back down from the challenge, putting his people at risk by facing the dragon despite knowing he should not fight.

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    Beowulf

    Uploaded by

    annie
    57 views5 pages
    Beowulf should not have fought the dragon for several reasons. He was too old, being over 70 years old after ruling for 50 years. As an aging king without heirs, he should have let younger warriors handle the dragon threat. His death would leave his people without a leader and make them vulnerable to attacks from neighboring rival kingdoms. However, proud Beowulf refused to back down from the challenge, putting his people at risk by facing the dragon despite knowing he should not fight.

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    An essay on why Beowulf shouldn’t have fought the dragon

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    Beowulf should not have fought the dragon for several reasons. He was too old, being over 70 years old after ruling for 50 years. As an aging king without heirs, he should have let younger warriors handle the dragon threat. His death would leave his people without a leader and make them vulnerable to attacks from neighboring rival kingdoms. However, proud Beowulf refused to back down from the challenge, putting his people at risk by facing the dragon despite knowing he should not fight.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    57 views5 pages

    Beowulf

    Uploaded by

    annie
    Beowulf should not have fought the dragon for several reasons. He was too old, being over 70 years old after ruling for 50 years. As an aging king without heirs, he should have let younger warriors handle the dragon threat. His death would leave his people without a leader and make them vulnerable to attacks from neighboring rival kingdoms. However, proud Beowulf refused to back down from the challenge, putting his people at risk by facing the dragon despite knowing he should not fight.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 5

    Gifford 1

    Beowulf’s Fight with the Dragon

    Annie Gifford

    Medieval Literature

    Mrs.Reynolds

    12/11/19
    Gifford 2

    Annie Gifford

    Mrs.Reynolds

    Medieval literature

    2 December 2019

    Beowulf’s Fight with the Dragon

    Beowulf should not have fought the dragon for multiple reasons, including old age and

    the fact that he had no heirs. In the epic poem Beowulf, the hero of our story fights three different

    monsters, Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and a dragon. Beowulf is named for the hero Beowulf, who

    is a geatish warrior who was well known for defeating Breca in a swimming match. When

    Beowulf was around twenty years old he heard about a monster who was terrorizing the Danes,

    Grendel. Beowulf journeys over to the Danes land and defeats both Grendel and his mother.

    Beowulf eventually becomes king of the geats and ruled for fifty years peacefully until an

    unnamed thief steals from the hoard of a dragon. Beowulf chooses to fight the dragon, even

    though he should not have. (Heaney & Donoghue 2019)

    Beowulf ruled for fifty years, but it was never specified how old he was when he was

    crowned. Beowulf was crowned after his cousins where killed in a blood-feud (Shmoop Editorial

    Team), but no one knows how long the blood-feud lasted for, it could have been years. In the

    beginning of the poem Beowulf is twenty years old, if you add that to the fifty years he ruled

    give or take a few years for the blood-feud, Beowulf would have been over seventy. Even if

    Beowulf was a very healthy seventy-years old, he would still be very old, and if a

    seventy-year-old and a dragon fought, it is most likely that the dragon would win.
    Gifford 3

    If you had a great leader that led for fifty years, you would want them to continue right?

    So why did a great leader like Beowulf leave to fight a dragon? He should have stayed to rule,

    and send other, younger warriors. While Beowulf did bring other warriors to help him, the ones

    he brought were cowardly and ran away at the first sign of trouble. Wiglaf was the only warrior

    that stayed and helped Beowulf fight the dragon.

    While there are multiple reasons for Beowulf to not have fought the dragon a big one is

    that he had no heirs. During the 5th and 6th century which is when Beowulf is said to take

    place(Shmoop Editorial Team) Europe was ruled by little kingdoms, where hereditary succession

    was very important. Beowulf had no heirs or known family members when he fought the dragon,

    so he had no one to inherit the throne if he died. All of Beowulf’s known family members had

    already been killed, or else Beowulf would never have become king. If Wiglaf had not helped his

    king, there would have been no way for Beowulf to appoint an heir, and Geatland would have

    been swallowed whole by the neighboring kingdoms.

    Besides leaving Geatland without a king, Beowulf also left them with no protection.

    ”Like Wiglaf, the messenger predicts that, with Beowulf gone, the Geats will be attacked by their

    neighbors, the Franks, and the Frisians. The messenger also predicts that the old feud between

    the Geats and the Swedes will be revived.” (shmoop Editorial team) Beowulf became king

    because of the feud between the geats and the swedes, and the Swedes were too afraid to fight

    Beowulf when he was king, now that Beowulf it was almost certain that they would attack.
    Gifford 4
    In conclusion, Beowulf should not have fought the dragon, and he knew it. “After many

    trials, he was destined to face the end of his days in this mortal world; as was the dragon, for all

    his long leasehold on the treasure.” (2341-2344) Beowulf had many reasons not to fight the

    dragon, but the biggest was probably that he was abandoning his people, leaving them with no

    king or protection. Beowulf chooses to fight the dragon, even though he should not have.

    “Beowulf got ready, donned his war-gear, indifferent to death” (1441-1442)


    Gifford 5

    Works cited and Bibliography


    SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Beowulf.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2003. Web.
    10 Dec. 2019.

    Shmoop Editorial Team. "Beowulf Summary." Shmoop. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008.
    Web. 11 Dec. 2019.

    Shmoop Editorial Team. "Beowulf Lines 2712-3182 Summary." Shmoop. Shmoop University,
    Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 17 Dec. 2019.

    Heaney, Seamus, and Daniel Donoghue. Beowulf: a Verse Translation. W.W. Norton and
    Company, 2019.

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