REACTION PAPER: BEOWULF

I’ve been watching Beowulf, and it strikes me that it ends in the same place as the Iliad
(the funeral of a great warrior and the anticipation of destruction), and that the code of values is
the same in both poems: the generosity, the ready emotion, the violence, the loyalty, the belief in
fame and glory as immortality.

However, it lacks the thing that I love best about the Iliad; the small moments where the
characters stop being epic heroes and are just people.  I’d love to know more about why Hygelac
underestimated Beowulf before the slaying of Grendel; or about the friendship between Hrothgar
and Aeschere; or how Heardred felt about his mother trying to make Beowulf king instead; or
anything more about Unferth, languid sharp-tongued arrogant kinslayer.  But there’s just not
enough of it there.

The other thing I notice about Anglo-Saxon poetry is a constant sense of precariousness,
of impending loss and devastation.  Wealth, life, health, happiness - all of them are lent.  And
that I think explains the stress on the earl as protector, on the safety and joy of the mead-hall
against the darkness outside where who knows what lurks, and the focus on treasure – not only
dragons curled over their gold or lords handing out rings, but the body as bone-cage, or feelings
as a thought-hoard, a heart’s chest.

Lastly, while I didn’t love Nicola Griffith’s Hild as much as I hoped I would, the more I
watch of Anglo-Saxon poetry, the more I realise just how incredibly good she is at getting inside
their mindset.

Harvy Ayn Dorado/STEM 11- St. Raphael