Teaching English in Elementary

Grades through Literature

Activity 4

Submitted by:
Jhonry D. Laquinta
BEEd 3-A
WRITE SAMPLES OF HERO TALES ACCORDING TO
THEIR NATIONALITY.
1 ENGLISH ( BEOWULF)
1 AMERICAN ( BUFFALO BILL)
1 FILIPINO (LAM-ANG)
1 GREEK ( THE STORY OF ODYSSEUS)

 ENGLISH

It deals with events of the early 6th century and was

probably composed c. 700–750. It tells the story of the
Scandinavian hero Beowulf, who gains fame as a young
man by vanquishing the monster Grendel and Grendel's
mother; later, as an aging king, he kills a dragon but dies
soon after, honored and lamented. In Beowulf, the major
themes reflect the values and the motivations of the
characters. One of the central themes of Beowulf,
embodied by its title character, is loyalty. At every step of
his career, loyalty is Beowulf's guiding virtue. Beowulf
comes to the assistance of the Danes (Scyldings) for
complicated reasons. Beowulf helps scholars trace the
evolution of the English language as well as study the
norms and traditions of the Anglo-Saxons in the medieval
period. Beowulf gives a glimpse of England's history and
the earliest forms of literature of the people of
England.Beowulf illustrates three important morals of its
time: bravery, honor, and loyalty. Beowulf, the hero of the
poem, exhibits great bravery in everything he does.
 AMERICAN

Buffalo Bill lives deep in American legend. A Kansas-

bred farm boy, he went on to become a renowned trapper
and hunter, army scout, Indian fighter, and finally a world
showman and celebrity. As a man of the Wild West, he
became known as a larger-than-life buffalo hunter. Cody
received the nickname "Buffalo Bill" after the American
Civil War, when he had a contract to supply Kansas
Pacific Railroad workers with buffalo (American bison)
meat. As an army scout, he earned the Medal of Honor for
gallantry in action. But Bill was unsatisfied. Setting his
sights higher yet, he traveled the country performing in
Wild West stage shows, and eventually founded “Buffalo
Bill’s Wild West,” a terrifically successful traveling
production depicting cowboy and Indian life on the
plains. Bill’s show earned him large sums of money and
drove him to intense national prominence at the turn of
the century. This is his story in his own words.
 FILIPINO

BIAG NI LAM-ANG (Life of Lam-ang) is a pre-Hispanic

epic poem of the Ilocano people of the Philippines. The
story was handed down orally for generations before it
was written down around 1640 assumedly by a blind
Ilokano bard named Pedro Bucaneg. Don Juan and his
wife Namongan lived in Nalbuan, now part of La Union in
the northern part of the Philippines. They had a son
named Lam-ang. Before Lam-ang was born, Don Juan
went to the mountains in order to punish a group of their
Igorot enemies. While he was away, his son Lam-ang was
born. It took four people to help Namongan give birth. As
soon as the baby boy popped out, he spoke and asked
that he be given the name Lam-ang. He also chose his
godparents and asked where his father was. It was a
tradition to have a newly married man swim in the river
for the rarang fish. Unfortunately, Lam-ang dove straight
into the mouth of the water monster Berkakan. Ines had
Marcos get his bones, which she covered with a piece of
cloth. His rooster crowed and his dog barked and slowly
the bones started to move. Back alive, Lam-ang and his
wife lived happily ever after with his white rooster and
gray dog.
 GREEK

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic

poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant
works of literature still widely read by modern audiences.
As with the Iliad, the poem is divided into 24 books. It
follows the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his
journey home after the Trojan War. After the war, which
lasted ten years, his journey lasted for ten additional
years, during which time he encountered many perils and
all his crew mates were killed. In his absence, Odysseus
was assumed dead, and his wife Penelope and son
Telemachus had to contend with a group of unruly suitors
who were competing for Penelope's hand in marriage. The
Odyssey was originally composed in Homeric Greek in
around the 8th or 7th century BCE and, by the mid-6th
century BCE, had become part of the Greek literary
canon. In antiquity, Homer's authorship of the poem was
not questioned, but contemporary scholarship
predominantly assumes that the Iliad and the Odyssey
were composed independently and that the stories
formed as part of a long oral tradition. Given widespread
illiteracy, the poem was performed by an aoidos or
rhapsode and was more likely to be heard than read.