Skip to main content

Reading Notes: Beowulf, Part B

The Story of Beowulf by Strafford Riggs 

In the second half of the unit, Grendel attacks the hall and puts everyone into a magical sleep. Except, Beowulf wasn't asleep so he is able to fight against the spell. Grendel breaks in and kills one man but while he is devouring him, Beowulf wakes up and the two fight together. The are fairly well matched, until Beowulf is able to get a hold on one of Grendel's arms and rips it off.

With that, Grendel runs away and the others wake up. The next day, they celebrate but that night, one of Hrothgar's men is killed and they realize that they forgot about Grendel's monster mother who has taken revenge for her son and will continue to kill them.

Beowulf vows to fight her too, so he, his men and king Hrothgar and his men track Grendel's mother with hounds until they reach a murky pond. Beowulf jumps in alone and descends to the bottom. For a while, it is pitch black and he has to strike out blindly against things that pass him but then he can see.

He is pulled into a cave by a hag, Grendel's mother and they fight. Beowulf is almost bested but he pulls a magical sword out of the wall and kills her. Then he cuts of Grendel's head and swims back to the top where his men are still waiting for him.

Together they return to Hrothgar and show him the head of Grendel. After that, they return to their own land where Beowulf eventually becomes the king. For a long time it is peaceful until a dragon starts terrorizing the land.

Beowulf and some earls go after it but the earls run away, leaving Beowulf to fight alone, except for Wiglaf who fights with him. The dragon gets a killing blow on Beowulf but Wiglaf kills it. As he is dying, Wiglaf brings him a beautiful crown from the dragon's lair. Then he dies and has a glorious funeral.


Photo Credit: deviantart

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Week 3 Wikipedia Trail

For this assignment, I started with the article about the Canterbury Tales, since that is what I am working on for my project. First article:  The_Canterbury_Tales This one is very intensive and covers not only a premise of the story but also a historical context, the themes, and the style of the writing. I imagine I am going to use this article a lot when I begin working on my project. From this article, there are links to all the other sections and a bunch of pictures of the different pilgrims. Second article:  General_Prologue This is the prologue and the beginning of the story. It not only gives a premise to the storytelling competition, it gives a background of the pilgrims and their destination. I am going to use a similar premise in my project and will refer to this article when I am working on my introduction. One thing I am debating is whether I will have a "Geoffrey Chaucer" character in my story. In the original, the author inserted himself into the tale, I d...

Reading Notes: Ozaki, Part A

Japenese Fairytales,  Ozaki  by Yei Theodora Ozaki In this unit, there have been three stories so far: My Lord Bag of Rice In this story the name of Tawara Toda, which means "My Lord Bag of Rice" is explained. He was a brave warrior who came across a large dragon on a bridge. Instead of running away, he just climbed over the dragon and continued going, however, someone called out to him and when he looked back he discovered a person where the dragon had been. It was the Dragon King whose family was being killed by a giant centipede every night and he begged for the warrior's help. The warrior agreed and went to wait for the centipede. As it came down a mountain, he shot it with an arrow tipped in saliva which killed the centipede. The Dragon King was so grateful, he gave the warrior, among other things, a sack of rice which never ran out. The Adventures of Kintaro A warrior married a woman, however, he died and his wife ran away to the wilderness in fear of his e...

Week 10 Lab: Research

This week I researched potential topics for my project's second story. I mainly browsed different urban legend articles on Snoops. I still haven't completely nailed down what my story will be about but I have a few ideas and even if urban legends aren't the primary topic, given my characters, I think they might come up. And to be honest, I am never super clear about how my story will go when I begin so I think I'll be fine.  Here are a few links to articles I looked at:  Scary Urban Legends 25 Hottest Urban Legends Most Popular Urban Legends of 2015      <- this one was mostly just funny. I didn't know most of them so I guess I am out of the loop when it comes to Urban Legends.  I looked up "Confused" on google and this came up. It does not portray my feelings but it did make me confused as to why it was a result so here you go:  Photo Credit: maxpixel