Conflict And Conflict In Beowulf

Old English poems can range and be a part of many genres, including, exemplum’s, fabliau’s, romance’s, and many more. Many stories have a ‘hero’ aspect to them, and within the story there are conflicts and usually end in a fortunate way. In the Old English time period, ending at roughly 1150AD, heroic poetry was very popular. Sometimes the hero is faced with problems in society, face-to-face conflict (fighting), along with many other scenarios. In the poem “Beowulf”, the main character, Beowulf, deal’s with much conflict and contributes to several clashes. “Beowulf contains timely insights into leadership and motivation, trust, respect, loyalty, and sacrifice.” (Loughman & Finley). Numerous battles Beowulf combats in lead him to become even …show more content…
This fight made Beowulf’s ego go through the roof, and everyone was astonished in regards to his accomplishment. Another characteristic to Anglo Saxon is courage or where the hero questions fate, this is where Beowulf’s pride is pretty high and he thinks he is very strong and can defeat any obstacle he comes face to face with (Cascio 1). After the defeat of Grendel he returns to Hygelac, and gives away all of his treasures from the battles (Garcia 1). This shows that Beowulf has Humility, another aspect of a hero in Anglo Saxon Old English time. These fights made Beowulf become a better leader because he grew stronger as a person, and his peers looked up to him, he’s become a role model to other warriors in this epic …show more content…
Concluding, Beowulf attempts to defeat a dragon, all alone. He does not let his other fighters try and help defeat the dragon alongside him; he wants to do it alone. After a few minutes, one of the knights decide to help him, Beowulf gets hurt by the dragon, but Beowulf and the fellow knight do defeat the dragon, together. Beowulf gets a wound during battle with the dragon, and shows no sign of weakness or fear. This demonstrates Beowulf’s “Thick Skin” which is also a piece of what Old English heroes in poetry had (Cascio 1). Beowulf ends up dying from the fatal wound, but the whole time he’s suffering the wound he shows no shred of sorrow, fear, or lack of courage (Cascio 1). He shows courage when he goes to defeat the dragon alone, but one could say that was not the intelligent decision, but, he did grow as a leader. He died, knowing that he left something behind, he is still a role-model to the knights who accompanied him, because he went alone, he was courageous, and even though he didn’t live through the last fight, it showed how much of a leader he really