Anglo Saxon Culture In Beowulf

In Burton Raffel's, epic poem, Beowulf, one of the main values that stand out is essentially culture. Beowulf, the hero of all hero’s shows this through his willingness to come so close to death day after day, his insistence on having humility and being loyal to people in need. As readers, we see that in Anglo-Saxon society Beowulf is a valuable hero. He seems to have all of the qualities that a hero expected to have. Traits such as honor, valor, respect and bravery all come very easily to Beowulf. Although Beowulf has all of these qualities he completes such traitorous, dangerous feats for all of the wrong reasons. From these tasks, Beowulf expects everlasting glory, fame, and above all immortality. Elements such as friendship, loyalty, generosity and bravery were quintessential in Anglo-Saxon society. The most important being loyalty, without it the whole system would crumble. As the whole Anglo-Saxon “government” ran on the loyalty to each other, if there was no more loyalty between each other there would be no culture. The first and maybe most important element of Anglo-Saxon culture/society is loyalty amongst each other. We see many examples of loyalty throughout this poem that leads to keeping the people who are a part of Anglo-Saxon culture together. For example, it was the Geats loyalty to the Danes that led Beowulf

It was a friendship that made it worthwhile when going into battle. It was a warrior's brethren that spurred his fight while in battle. It is a well-known law that in Anglo-Saxon culture and society if warriors didn’t return with their comrades they were publicly shamed and humiliated. It was your friends that told of your glorious feats when you passed, that kept you alive even when you weren’t. It is well known that Beowulf valued all of his friendships dearly even at the end of his