The Heroic Quest In Heaney's Beowulf

The Heroic Quest of Beowulf In Heaney’s Beowulf, Beowulf exhibits the traits of an epic hero through his three battles of good versus evil and his lifelong quest to rid the world of demons. A quest must begin with a quester, and in this poem, his name is Beowulf and he must perform heroic actions to complete his quest. The quester is often the hero of any book or poem. His goal is to do something meaningful and heroic that will sometimes bring the quester fame and fortune. In Beowulf, the quester is Beowulf and he partakes on a quest in Denmark. As Foster states, “The quest consists of five things: (a) a quester, (b) a place to go, (c) a stated reason to go there, (d) challenges and trials en route, and (e) a real reason to go there” (Foster 3). Therefore, Beowulf is the in the

The epic hero Beowulf is a brave, strong, resilient, and courageous man. These attributes strengthen his own resolve and will make it possible for him to complete his quest until death. Ordinarily, Beowulf’s first steps in his quest begin with his brawls with Grendel and Grendel’s Mother. Grendel is the first challenge for the mighty hero to encounter; he is a giant beast with incredible brute strength, and cunning. The many assaults he waged on the mead hall caused atrocious pain to the Danes. Heaney writes, “So Grendel waged his lonely war, inflicting constant cruelties on the people, atrocious hurt. He took over Heorot, haunted the glittering hall after dark” (Heaney 164-67). These acts of evil are enough to get Beowulf to sail to Denmark. Nevertheless, the good in him needs to erase this inherit evil from the face of the earth. Grendel is a spawn of something stronger and more evil, he is a child of hell. This is Beowulf’s first encounter with such a sinister power. He fights the monster in the mead hall and prevails, Heaney concludes, “Before morning he [Grendel] would rip life from limb and devour them, feed on their flesh; but his