Warrior- Timed Writing #1

 

                In the Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf, there were many unbelievable and supernatural parts of the story.  The movie, Beowulf, made the unbelievable parts believable.  Three of these unbelievable aspects were: Grendel, Grendel's mother, and the fiery dragon.

    Grendel was originally told as an evil beast, "spawned of slime."  This monster ate people just because it felt like it.   In your mind, you know that Grendel could have never have existed, but the Anglo-Saxons were writing about something.  The movie made Grendel into a whole gang of men who believed they were bears, who came when it was foggy out.  They wore bearskins and acted the part of a bear.  The Anglo-Saxons were afraid of these people and hired Beowulf to fight them.  This told why Beowulf was there and what the people were afraid of.

    An old woman in the movie told the warriors to kill the mother and the bear people would go away.  In the epic, Beowulf killed the mother because she had killed a man in revenge for her son.  The thirteen men went inside the home of the bear people, which was a large cave that led to the ocean by waterway.   Beowulf wouldn't let any of his men help in slaying the mother bear, and was poisoned himself.  She was just a creepy old woman with bones in her hair.  she was a driving force with her men, but they still fought.  it realistically explained that she was just human like the rest of her colony, and not a supernatural monster.

    As fog came, the thirteen warriors in Hrothgar's land saw fire stretching in the country.  At first, they believed this to be a gigantic, fire-breathing dragon.  The Arab rode into the hills for a child and discovered it to be a Calvary of bear people with torches.  In the epic, this was Beowulf's last battle, a fight with a fire-breathing dragon.  Even so, the movie explained why they were disillusioned, the fog and the fire.  One man in the movie even said that he would have rather it be a dragon.

    Beowulf, the movie, made the original epic into a believable story.  Many men came and attacked Hrothgar's people every night in the blackness of night and the covering of fog.  Since they did this, the people were disillusioned, and believed this army to be one of supernatural statures.

 

Beowulf