Picking up right where we left off:
Before picking up right where we left off, let me offer a reminder of why we’re looking specifically at Beowulf as a hero. He’s prototypical. He fits perfectly the Western mold. And even though, as we saw last week, Beowulf got a late start in exerting his literary and cultural influence on us as an archetypal hero, he’s more than made up for it in the last century or so.
Okay, now let’s get down to the deconstructive task at hand: rethinking the Hero. We’ll inspect a few prominent binary oppositions and locate some subtle gaps created by the text of Beowulf. If you need to, please review the plot summary of the tale provided at the end of last week’s post.
The obvious place to start is with the central either/or pairings: hero/enemy, human/monster, civilized/savage, good/evil. Beowulf and Hrothgar are placed on the superior side of these binaries, while Grendel, Ms. Grendel, and the Dragon are placed on the inferior side.
Yet early in the story we’re told that as a young man, Hrothgar enjoyed great success and won much honor in battle, leading “a mighty troop of men.” In due course, Hrothgar builds “a great mead-house” (that is, the party barn of Heorot) where every night he and his crew can feast, drink to excess, and listen to the scop sing songs praising, well, the culture of Hrothgar and his crew. And this racket is what riles Grendel: “for every day he heard the joyful din loud in the hall.” As a result, this “grim spirit” who keeps to the moors and fens, “this miserable man” as he is interestingly designated, starts his attacks on the Danes.
But why? What’s Grendel’s motive here? We’re never told. But this savage-evil-enemy-monster doesn’t go around arbitrarily gobbling up any Dane in his path (that is, the common folk). Grendel only attacks Hrothgar’s seat of political power, Heorot, and his elite warrior nobles, called thanes. Moreover, “Grendel strove long with Hrothgar,” refusing to negotiate and “wanting no peace with any man of the Danish army.” This “foe of mankind” makes it his mission to humiliate Hrothgar, he “occupied Heorot” and “saw no need to salute the throne” and “scorned the treasures” of the Danish king. In short, Grendel doesn’t play diplomatic ball with the Danes. (See lines 64-169).
What’s going on here? This doesn’t really sound like a mindless, marauding monster on the loose. Is some kind of more sophisticated scenario afoot? Just maybe, is Grendel not actually a drooling, senseless brute but, instead, a victim of Hrothgar’s expansionism?
Did Hrothgar invade Grendel’s territory, defeat Grendel’s tribe, and set up shop in Grendel’s homeland? Back in the day, that’s exactly the kind of thing warrior chiefs did with their mighty troops of men. They raided, plundered, seized. You know, the usual. Is Grendel, then, not really a monster-enemy-evil-savage creature, but a freedom fighter defending his homeland?
Just a thought. Just a possibility generated by problematizing some core binaries and exploring a gap or two—minor missteps—in the story itself. Remember, some of the most important things to pay attention to in a text is what goes unsaid—what’s been conveniently left out of the text.
I’ll go out on a limb here to venture that whoever first started telling this story—as well as all the folks who told and heard it subsequently—never saw an actual monster of the Grendel, Ms. Grendel, or Dragon variety. Sorry to spoil the fun, but such creatures simply don’t exist. However, just as history is written by the winners, so is fantasy (and myth and legend and fable and saga and the rest). Thus, plausibly, these creatures—and the Grendels in particular—could be monsterized versions of defeated rivals, of a vanquished and dispossessed tribe. From the Danish point of view, the Grendels are Bad Them. So why not turn them into vicious animals? It certainly makes for a better story—and wonderful tribalistic propaganda.
If we’re rethinking Hrothgar as a hero-human-civilized-good guy, we better start wondering about the main attraction himself: Beowulf. At first glance, he seems the normal savior, do-right kind of hero. But it doesn’t take long to start fretting about his being, well, a bit of an insane hired thug as well. Beowulf boasts—every chance he gets—about his own amazing warrior prowess—“the might of my strength”—as well as his marvelous feats of daring-do—such as swimming for five straight days and nights in chainmail armor killing sea monsters. (Okay...sure, dude...whatever you say.) He’s also unabashed about his reason for taking on Grendel: he’s in it for the dual reward of treasure and fame. Beowulf never hides being both a gold- and a glory-hound. It’s all part of building his warrior-cult résumé, establishing his hero brand.
When taking on Grendel, Beowulf declares it will be in single combat, mano a monstruo, and that he will use neither shield nor sword. He crows: “I shall grapple with the fiend and fight for life, foe against foe.” (Yeah...whatever.) After Hrothgar and his boys hightail it out of their mead-hall, as they do now every evening, Beowulf and his men bed down for the night inside Heorot—awaiting the onslaught. This act of bravery, however, is tainted somewhat. When Grendel first creeps into the great Hall, Beowulf takes the time to observe—just to get a feel for how this foe operates—the monster snatch up and devour one of the Geat warriors. We’re told that our hero: “beheld how that maneater planned to proceed with his sudden assault.” Gosh, no bueno for Beowulf’s loyal companion. But I guess that’s what minions are for.
Beowulf and Grendel wind up in a kind of mortal handshake, with Beowulf finally ripping off Grendel’s arm. If we’re so inclined, we can feel sympathy for the defeated creature, as we’re told that Grendel “had never met on middle-earth...another man with a greater handgrip” and “in his heart he was afraid for his life” and “was eager to escape to the darkness.” Grendel does break away (minus an arm) to scurry back home to die. Yet is he a slain monster or an overmatched rebel-with-a-cause? It’s bad enough that Hrothgar conquered his land. It’s adding insult to injury that the old king brought in a barrel-chested ape to do mop-up. (See lines 371-455, 662-836.)
The very next night Grendel’s mother—“monster-woman” (line 1259)—shows up to avenge her son. At this point, let’s add two more key binaries to analyze: male/female, king/queen.
When Ms. Grendel crashes the party at Heorot, she continues the politically directed nature of her son’s attacks. She kills only Hrothgar’s “chief thane,” what the “grieved at heart” king mourns as “my confidant and my counselor” and long-time battle companion. She also retrieves her son’s arm, which the Danes had hung on the wall for a trophy. Her raid is characterized as sneaky and cowardly. We’re told: “The horror was less by as much as a maiden’s strength, a woman’s warfare, is less than an armed man’s.” (See lines 1251-1382.) This is standard anti-woman stuff. We all know how girls are conniving and weak. Right?
But when Beowulf breaks into Ms. Grendel’s “battle-hall” at the bottom of the lake, he comes fully armed and armored—unlike when he decided to wrestle unarmed against Grendel. What is more, this supposedly weaker and spineless “water-witch” and “mere-wife” kicks Beowulf’s ass. She overpowers him, knocking him to the floor and jumping on top of him to finish him off with her “broad, bright-edged” knife. Only his chainmail shirt saves Beowulf—that and a dash of Divine intervention. We’re told: “holy God brought about war-victory” for our hero. Beowulf spots a miraculous “giant-sword” in the lair, grabs it and runs it through Ms. Grendel’s neck. (See lines 1513-1569.)
This particular brawl isn’t quite the clear-cut heroic victory we expect, though, is it? Beowulf doesn’t win it on his own amazing merits. He’s equipped with better technology (the chainmail) and bankrolled by a superior backer (holy God). Again, this all sounds suspiciously like a colonizer-colonized situation going on.
Arguably, Ms. Grendel is not a monster at all but the Queen of the tribe (perhaps a matriarchal group?) that Hrothgar subjugated years ago. As such, she’s fighting every bit as nobly as her son to resist the Danish invaders and restore her realm.
On top of muddling the male/female binary in Beowulf, then, Ms. Grendel calls into question as well the king/queen oppositional construct conspicuous in this tale. As a queen, Ms. Grendel is strong and carries out her duties stalwartly, even as she, her son, and her queendom get overwhelmed by superior forces. On the other hand, if we really think about it (one of my most favorite phrases!), Hrothgar is an extremely weak and ineffectual king.
For starters, Hrothgar and his thanes can’t take care of their monster problem by themselves and have to outsource the job to a foreign contractor. On top of that, Hrothgar sneaks off every night to sleep in “the woman’s chambers with a great entourage” (line 922) rather than stay in his own great Hall to face Grendel. Add to this unkingly behavior Hrothgar’s blubbering inconsolably—“mourn overmuch” (line 1385)—when Ms. Grendel slays his good-buddy thane. It would seem that, along with being a fraidy-cat, Hrothgar indulges in outbreaks of hysteria. Worst of all, when Beowulf finally rids the Danes of the Grendels, Hrothgar stupidly all but gives his kingdom away to the young Geatish champion. He tells Beowulf: “I will cherish you...like a son in my heart; hold well henceforth your new kinship” (lines 946-949).
These are not words to be bandied about lightly. Not when you’re speaking them to a brawny young berserker like Beowulf. Not when you’re the chief of a warrior tribe surrounded by other warrior tribes (to include the Geats) that are quite eager and able to take advantage of any vulnerability you show.
Luckily for Hrothgar, he’s married to an especially savvy queen, Wealhtheow.
At the feast celebrating Beowulf’s victory, Wealhtheow speaks to the assembled nobles. Her remarks, however, seem directed squarely at her bubble-headed husband. She tells Hrothgar to “use your many rewards while you can, and leave to your kinsmen the folk and kingdom.” By this she means: give this chest-thumping Geat as much treasure as you like, but leave your realm to your own two young sons—you old dipshit.
Shrewdly, Wealhtheow has seated Beowulf between her two boys, making him an avuncular figure. When expressing her abundant thanks to the hero, the queen makes it a point to emphasize just how much spectacular treasure Beowulf has been paid and just how much everlasting fame he’s won for his marvelous deeds. The implication here is that all of this booty and glory should be enough for him—so there’s really no need to seize Hrothgar’s dominion, too.
Wealhtheow is also keen to usher the big lug out the door of Heorot, sending Beowulf on his way back to Geatland: “Be while you live blessed, o nobleman! I wish you well with these bright treasures.” For good measure, she throws in a final reminder to Beowulf for him to permit the normal lines of kingly succession run their course: “Be to my sons kind in your deeds, keeping them in joys!” (See lines 1162-1231.)
Unlike Hrothgar, Wealhtheow clearly is no fool. Within these warrior societies, kings were in charge of the war-making and the head-busting; queens oversaw the kinship relations and the inter-tribal peace-weaving. It’s easy to read Wealhtheow as being far better at her job than Hrothgar is at his. Upon closer inspection, then, we see in Beowulf examples of two strong queens whereas, in the king department, we see two old fools: Hrothgar at the start of the saga and, fifty years later, Beowulf at saga’s end.
One last binary opposition in Beowulf wants examining. Intriguingly, this one deconstructs itself. So much so that I don’t know whether to write it as Pagan/Christian or as Christian/Pagan. Being told orally and eventually written down at a time in England when these two religions coexisted and clashed, this text is a striking combination of both worldviews. Because two monastic scribes set down the one version of the narrative that has survived, Christianity more or less gets the final word in Beowulf. However, this does not mean that the distinctly pagan hero at the heart of the adventure gets entirely trashed.
When the young Beowulf does battle with the Grendels, his Pagan hero virtues are allowed to shine through. In that warrior culture, you want your chieftain to be a powerful braggadocio widely acclaimed for skull-cracking and winning treasure. That’s how he attracts able warriors to be devoted followers, thus keeping rival tribes at bay. A good deal of Christian messaging finds its way into the early parts of the text, such as Beowulf’s being a Christ figure come to save the Danes: “Holy God in His grace has guided him to us” (lines 381-382). But young-gun Beowulf likewise garners praise for his devotion to the Pagan belief of an unknowable Fate governing all. Beowulf brags: “Wyrd [Fate] often spares an undoomed man, when his courage endures!” (lines 572-573).
When Beowulf prepares to go back home, however, Hrothgar somberly counsels the young man to “care not for pride” (line 1760). Along with warning Beowulf to avoid the deadliest of the Christian seven deadly sins, Hrothgar delivers a standard Christian memento mori (“remember that you die”) speech as well. The old king uses himself as an object lesson in how quickly youth, power, glory, and riches fade. The final portion of Beowulf can be read, pointedly, as how “fifty winters” later, when facing the Dragon, old king Beowulf foolishly ignores Hrothgar’s little Christian homily.
The geriatric Beowulf stupidly goes after the Dragon in max-Pagan mode. He boasts that he will grapple with the beast all by his lonesome, “as I once did with Grendel.” His goal is the standard Pagan hunt for Glory and Gold. (The Dragon, of course, like all card-carrying Dragons, hoards a great cache of plunder in its lair.) In this ill-Fated pursuit, Beowulf follows not the Christian God but adheres instead to the old Pagan ways, declaring that the battle will go “as wyrd decrees, the Ruler of every man” (see lines 2510-2537).
As it turns out, wyrd decrees things go badly for everyone involved.
Beowulf kills the Dragon, but the great king also dies from his wounds. All the booty from the Dragon’s stash turns out to have a curse on it that only the Christian God—“the true King of Victories, Protector of men” (line 3055)—can lift. Because of this curse, the Geats wind up burying all this useless loot alongside Beowulf in his elaborate barrow (tomb).
So much for the Gold objective of Beowulf’s plan. His ambition for Glory backfires as well.
With the famous King Beowulf now dead, the many unfriendly tribes surrounding his kingdom will be emboldened to attack. When delivering the bad news of their mighty leader’s demise to the Geats, the loyal young thane, Wiglaf, editorializes: “Often many earls must suffer misery through the will of one man, as we have now seen” (lines 3077-3078). In other words, nobody could talk Beowulf out of his idiotic strategy to face the Dragon alone.
In the same vein, during the funeral ceremonies for Beowulf an unidentified “Geatish woman” sings a dirge for the departed king where she “earnestly said that she dreaded the hard days ahead, the times of slaughter, the host’s terror, harm and captivity” (lines 3150-3155). What she anticipates is the certain invasion of Geatland and the horrors of being conquered. With their legendary king now gone, the Geats are screwed. Ironically, Beowulf’s people are soon to find themselves in the same dire straits as Grendel’s people.
At a time when England was being Christianized, a Pagan-behaving hero certainly could be marveled at and enjoyed. Yet the truer Truth constructed by the text seems to belong to the Christian-believing storytellers and, eventually, scribes who wove into this Scandinavian tale of adventure the Christ-like attributes of humility and poverty. That is to say, qualities that lead, not to earthly gains, but to eternal rewards.
Pagan pride, riches, and brashness over Christian humility, penury, and meekness? Or the other way around? Gee, who can decide?
So what?
I like my reading of Beowulf. But I know it’s not the only legitimate one. I enjoy hearing other people’s readings of Beowulf. Other readings augment and expand my own—even when I don’t agree with them.
I like having the utensils, as well as the permission, to dig into a text to find interpretations of my own. I enjoy having such readerly agency. In fact, I no longer tolerate anything less. If I end up liking and accepting a text as it seems constructed to be read and understood, well, it’s after I’ve thought about it thoroughly.
So, yes, I’m afraid critical reading becomes something of a tiresome habit. Even (well, especially) when I’m glued to Netflix. But often the tiresome is equally the indispensable.
Emerging from the prison-like experience of primary and secondary American schooling, college students typically have been given neither the utensils nor the permission to do anything like deconstruct a text set before them—any type of text from any subject area. Typically, from day one American students are hooked up to a firehose of selected and often sanitized “facts” for them to memorize and then, upon demand, to regurgitate.
Locating and decentering binaries changes that educational arrangement. Ferreting out and delving into gaps alters altogether the purpose of learning. Instead of being a vessel for someone else’s information, the student becomes a creator of knowledge—specifically, knowledge in the form of her own critical interpretation of a text. That is, a discerning interpretation worth sharing and debating with others. Suddenly, students are put into the interpretive game, turning them from being passive consumers of texts into active makers of texts.
Please believe me when I say that this fundamental shift in student activity can transform a classroom from being a one-way, mind-numbing lecture on blah-blah-blah into an invigorating debate encompassing multiple viewpoints, issues, and worldviews.
What is the magic ingredient facilitating this miraculous educational metamorphosis?
CONTEXT.
You no doubt will have noticed how much my analysis of the text of Beowulf depended on my bringing into the picture the context of Beowulf. The context not only of the story itself, but of the many authors who produce that story as well as the many listeners and readers of that story.
Next week, we’ll begin to explore this vital element of context. To conclude our deconstruction of Beowulf, the Hero, I offer the following two thoughts:
Undecidability is not chaos; it’s a teachable moment.
Context is not afterthought; it’s the whole point of picking up the text.
Reading a text of Beowulf:
Beowulf. Translated by R. M. Liuzza. In The Broadview Anthology of British Literature (Concise Edition, Volume A, Second Edition), eds. J. Black, et al. (Broadview Press, 2011, pp. 62-106, see: https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.cofc.edu/dist/0/550/files/2014/08/Beowulf-part-1-24pl0jo.pdf).