Seamus Heaney

which inevitably prohibit a person from observing all stances of a situation. This notoriously leads to the destructive nature within a person because he cannot happily live the life he desires. This idea is well portrayed in the poem Beowulf by Seamus Heaney and the movie Heathers directed by Michael Lehmann. One of the main antagonists in Beowulf is a monster named Grendel. From the day he was born, a nefarious lifestyle was projected upon him, and society punishes him for trying to live as…

In the epic Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney, the concept of simplistic duality is expressed quite frequently. However, the opposite can be observed in the movie Beowulf & Grendel, directed by Sturla Gunnarsson. In this day and age, where moviegoers want their films to mirror the original plot of their favorite novels, why would the director of Beowulf and Grendel decide to make such a deviation? The answer lies in our modern culture. Because our culture differs greatly than that of the…

Hannah Pridemore Mrs. Neu English 4 Honors-Period 4 October 12, 2015 Simile: a comparison between two unlike things using like or as. Example: “Each of his claws were as sharp as a knife.” (Life of Pi, Yann Martel, pg. 108) Function: While on the boat in the Pacific Ocean, the animals aboard the boat with Pi become very hostile. The hyena rips off the zebra’s leg shaking the boat. Pi is fearful that this may cause the boat to sink. The following day the zebra dies, and the hyena goes after…

Sophocles’ original intentions for his play Antigone has been open to interpretation for thousands of years through different languages, morals standards, wars, revolutions, cultural beliefs and human emotion, leading to varied and perhaps even misinterpretations on part of both audiences and translators, much like the bible. Throughout 4th century B.C.E and the 21st century, there has been vast changes in culture, thus leading to the audience reading the play and seeing it through a different…

Beowulf. Translated by Seamus Heaney, Bilingual ed., A Translation and Commentary, 700 AD, www.heorot.dk/beowulf-rede-text.html. Accessed 28 Feb. 2018. "Archetypes" ["Wordpress.com"]. Beowulf Adventures, 8 Oct. 2015, beowulfadventures.wordpress.com/2015/10/08/archetypes/. Accessed…

There are many different outlooks on life. Some believe that the world we exist in is meaningless and that nothing we do will be of importance. Others, however, have a much more lighthearted approach, focusing on enjoying their lives as much as possible and looking for enjoyable activities to partake in. This search for a purpose in life, or existentialism, shapes our realities and our ambitions. Depending on our ideology, our morals will be shaped in drastically different ways as well and…

Beowulf and Grendel (Gunnarsson, 2005), Grendel’s character is sympathized with to show how an audience expects complex backgrounds and developments for characters which contrast with simplistic duality that existed in 700 AD. In the epic Beowulf, (Seamus, 2000) translates the story in a way that shows very little character development of any of the characters. For instance, Beowulf is seen as this almighty, perfect warrior who could do no wrong. He automatically knew what, or who was evil…

slightest. Really, appears that the Christianity within the story was just scribbled in as extra (unnecessary) descriptive lines. The same can be said with a degree of certitude regarding the direct Old Testament reference within lines 100-114 of the Seamus Heaney translation. In it, Grendel, the monster that wages destruction on the Herot mead hall, is asserted as a descendant of the evil that the biblical character, Cain, released upon the world, which is quite a convenient backstory to give…

Black and White Today’s Hollywood bases its decisions with regard to the artistic quality of a work on how much revenue can be made, not so much on the story’s accuracy. If a story needs to be made more interesting to obtain the attention of the viewers it will be, even at the expense of the story’s veracity. The movie Beowulf and Grendel (Gunnarsson, S.) shows a transition in how Beowulf grows as a person while in the poem he remains a flat character. The movie and the book were very different…

How do the poems in the anthology explore the relationship of grief and memory? Grief of some kind or another is an inevitable fate we all meet some point in our lives but how grief affects us varies from person to person. In ‘War Photographer’, Carol Ann duffy explores the suppressed memories of a photographer’s past due to the traumatic nature memory of war. Piano examines the haunting and destructive capabilities of memory when the speaker remembers his childhood with his…