Compare Beowulf To Today

In Beowulf’s time, people admired a traditional hero who destroyed evil and protected the people by fighting monsters. This was the hero’s place in his society, and today a hero’s place is still not too different in fictional work. We see similarities between Beowulf and today’s fictional heroes in that they fight monstrous villains and always have a moment where they hit a low point in their story to defend their people or complete their mission. The first way Beowulf is similar to today’s fictional heroes is that they both still fight larger-than-life villains and monsters. In Beowulf, we see Grendel, the descendant of Cain who unleashes his power over Herot. He was described as, “A powerful monster, living down in the darkness, growled in pain, impatient” (Raffel,

In Beowulf, this moment comes after he tries to take on a dragon to take the treasure that it is defending. He relinquishes his power as strongest soldier in the moment he tells Wiglaf, “Take what I leave Wiglaf, lead my people, help them; my time is gone.” (Raffel 821-823). In Batman, he becomes seriously injured, just like Beowulf, and has to be rushed to a hospital to be helped, when Batman tries to return to the field and finish his mission, another soldier tells him to step aside and that he can take care of the rest of the mission. We can see these similarities between Beowulf representing the traditional hero and Batman, the modern fictional hero, and we can recognize that these two heros, while having different details in their story, share very similar points in their story. They both must fight a monster to defend the people they are protecting , and they both reach a point where they must give up their position of being the strongest, and the best, for the good of their people or