Unaborted Socrates Essay

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Beowulf was a Geatish warrior. He went to the Danes in order to fight the dragon, Grendal. Beowulf's goal was to prove his strength and courage by defeating this horrible demon that had been terrorizing the Danes for a while. The King of the Danes holds a great fest in Beowulf's honour, during which Beowulf boasts of past accomplishments. Grendal comes during the feast to once again, terrorize the Danes. Beowulf fights the Demon with no weapons and proves his strength to be greater than Grendal's. As Grendal tries to escape, Beowulf rips his arm off. Grendal goes back to swamp where he dies. Beowulf fought the dragon with no weapon in order to prove his great strength even without a weapon. The Danes greatly rejoiced in Beowulf's great show of power and ability by killing Grendal. Grendal's mother however, determined to extract revenge for Grendal's death. She killed one of the Danes, Aeschere, the King's most trusted adviser, and then went back to her swamp. When the Danes mourn the death Beowulf says to the King, "Wise sir, do not grieve. It is always better to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning. For every one of us, living in this world means waiting for our end. Let whoever can win glory before death. When a warrior is gone, that will be his best and only bulwark." By saying this Beowulf shows that his reason for everything he does is to win glory before his death. He also firmly believes that revenge is better than mourning. To avenge Aeschere's death the Danes went to the swamp. Beowulf dove into the swamp to fight Grendal's mother. Fighting underwater, Beowulf defeated her and then cut the head off the corpse of Grendal, which was at the bottom of the swamp, as a prize. Beowulf departs from the Danes and went on... ... middle of paper ... ...if the instances are exactly believable. Although one hero may not be more believable than the other, one man is more of a hero than the other. Beowulf went to battle with the dragon because he wanted to be heroic. Everything that Beowulf did throughout the story he did because he was a hero. He fought Grendal, Grendal's mother and later, the dragon of his own strength and defeated them all. Farmer Giles however didn't try to be a hero. The only reason that Farmer Giles became a hero is because he scared a giant off and the story became loudly acclaimed and exaggerated. If it wasn't for the magic sword that Farmer Giles had, he would have been killed by the dragon. Thus even though neither of these heroes are at all believable, Beowulf was a greater hero than Farmer Giles because of his heroic actions as compared to Farmer Giles accidental actions and magic sword.

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