Similarities Between Beowulf And The Hobbit

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The connections of heroism and parallels found in Beowulf and Tolkien’s the Hobbit are not new. For instance, the subject was written about in Roger Sales Modern Heroism and James Hodge’s essay “The Heroic Profile of Bilbo Baggins” (Glenn). J.R.R. Tolkien was a professor of English and loved the tale of Beowulf. Being as it may, its easily imaginable that some scenes, characters, and symbols made it into his book, the Hobbit. Others have also stated that Tolkien’s essay Of Monsters and Critics influenced Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf. True or not the two titles have many story aspects in common. Parallels from the characters, plot, and heroic hierarchy provide evidence to show how Beowulf influenced the Hobbit. The first, and most …show more content…
For instance, Tolkien foreshadows how Bilbo will act out lines 280 to 286 from Beowulf. These lines give a description of a thief who sneaks the cup as means for reinstatement. In the hobbit, this is shown as foreshadowing due to Gandalf’s words to the dwarves. He says that Bilbo “is a burglar, a Burglar he is, or will be when the time comes (Steele).” As for the final task, the dragon, Lakowski states that “Dragons can only be defeated by brave men – usually alone.” In Beowulf, we see Beowulf battle the dragon by himself for the majority of the battle until he is severely wounded. This is when Wiglaf steps in. Identically, the Bard is firing arrows at the Dragon unaided until Bilbo passes the information of its weak spot. After the Dragon has fallen, we get the foreshadowing of what is to come for the Geats. A Geat woman sings out in grief about “her nation invaded, enemies on the rampage, bodies in piles, slavery and abasement (Heaney 3153-3154).” Tolkien takes this a step further and uses’ this idea as the base of Chapter seventeen about the battle of the five armies. The kingdom is revenged, the dead are everywhere, but in the end, they win. The ending of Beowulf alluded to this type of war about to be waged in

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