BEOWULF? Help if you please =]?

Question

What does Beowulf symbolize? Grendel? The dragon?

Answer 1

OMGEEEEEEE!!!! I working on Beowulf too so I feel your pain lol but i really need some info on all that symbolism stuff!

Answer 2

Beowulf, only symboblizes Beowulf, Grendel symbolizes only Grendel, and the dragon symbolizes only the dragon.

That said Beowulf is an example, not a symbol, of a great hero, who seeks out exploits for their own sake and to increase his fame and glory. His heroic battle with the dragon indicates the downside of this sort of heroism: Beowulf is not capable of dealing with the dragon all by himself, and he dies.

Grendel is one of the various sorts of “trolls” imagined as living out in the wild beyond human habitation. His mother is the same. He is hostile to humans, regardless of the political infighting of those humans, much like a wolf or bear who has gotten used to preying on humans.

Dragons in classical tales are just large snakes, who sometimes breath fire.

By medieval times they are large fire-breathing snakes with arms, legs, and often have wings which enable them to fly. The dragon in “Beowulf” is arguably the best such dragon in medieval tales.

You can say that a dragon symbolizes a snake exagerated to a higher degree, or that a dragon symbolizes anti-human nature, or that a dragon symbolizes greed, or that a dragon symbolizes the devil. But these are only part-truths, which means they are also part-lies. The dragon symbolizes mostly itself as a discrete example of a particular dragon.

The dragon has a hoard and is strongly attached to it, because that is the nature of dragons in stories.

The author of the poem may have quite reasonably believed that there were dragons centuries before his time, and that there might be dragons living in his own time in far-off countries. That dragons are attracted by hoards is not especially more wonderful than the fact that crows are attracted by shiny objects which they hoard in their nests.

Some stories, such as “Pilgrim’s Progress” or Spenser’s “The Fairy Queene” are written as allegories, in which a large number of persons and places really represent something else, that is, they are symbols. I don’t see “Beowulf” as being written that way.

Answer 3

i dunno but the movie sucked &SS

Answer 4

How about good and evil?