Comparing Beowulf And Orwell's

Humans have progressed significantly in the past few thousand years and are continuing to progress even to this very day. In the beginning there was old english when stories were told from mouth to mouth and only kept alive in the hearts of the people who told them. These early stories, these myths and legends were nothing more than the imagination and dreams of the people at the time. Possibly for strength or courage, wisdom or fame, people created stories and told them and in them the people truly lived. This wasn’t simply seen in the early literature but throughout all of human literature. Geoffrey Chaucer’s short stories The Canterbury Tales, William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Mary Shelley’s Gothic novel Frankenstein, and George Orwell’s dystopian

Beowulf was a strong young man who was able to defeat a terrible monster known as Grendel. During this era in human history young men were expected to be far more durable and adequate compared to those of today. Those young men commonly had the dream of becoming king, defeating strong monsters, go on adventures, or even die a hero. All of which Beowulf managed to do making him a perfect role model for the young men at the time. The story of Beowulf truly captured all of the dreams of young men at the time and it was a perfect story for the time. Although times changed the dreams of the people never died, they were just advanced, edited and remade into new stories, better stories for better

Out of the smoke and coal came fear as well, fear of the unknown. What was this bright thing called electricity and what could it do? Mary Shelley’s Gothic novel Frankenstein showed this fear. Through this single book many concerns were addressed. This made sense, people fear things they don’t know and this was a time of confusion just as it was a time of advancements. This deep rooted fear was the cause of Frankenstein. Another fear arose as individuals gained more power and monopolized more influence over people, dictatorship. George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, understood this fear well and went in depth on the idea of this suppression of the people. The book introduces what it might be like to live in a society that contains and suppresses its population. These two books were written during a time of great change, and when change is sudden it’s hard to handle. This is obviously shown in these books. The current dreams and imagination of the people at the time is reflected in these two works proving people continued to look to themselves as the source of their literature from Old English even to the