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Bruce Banner

Professor Hoffman

English 101

27 March 2020

The Evolution of Beowulf

The hero is timeless. As a consequence, when it comes to the conception of a literary hero, no idea is original. It seems that in every other book or movie, a man is rescuing a damsel in distress or battling the forces of evil. Perhaps the most important landmark in the establishment of the hero archetype in the English language tradition is Beowulf. The famous poem of Beowulf is considered “the most important surviving work of Anglo-Saxon or Old English literature” (Clark 39). This tale of obscure origins describes the life of Beowulf, a hero who slays a beast by the name of Grendel, before also slaying Grendel’s mother. Fifty years later, Beowulf dies from a battle with a dragon. J.R.R. Tolkien borrowed heavily from Beowulf when he wrote The Lord of the Rings. Thorough study of both Tolkien’s Middle-Earth adventures and Beowulf’s ancient tale clearly shows that the heroes of The Lord of the Rings—and its predecessor The Hobbit—find significant aspects of their literary heroism in Beowulf’s protagonist.

One could argue that since Beowulf itself is such a difficult poem to work with, Tolkien’s interpretation of the character’s heroics is a moot point, as we’ll never fully understand what the anonymous author of Beowulf was trying to convey. Oren Falk, a professor at Cornell University, describes the ages-old poem as “difficult material to work… there is so little we know with confidence about it – and so much of what each of us does know with any degree of certainty is flatly contradicted by what others fancy they do, no less securely.” It is challenging to point to Tolkien’s 20th-century characters and draw lines back to a literary classic of unknown age and origin. However, the collective perception of Beowulf as a hero is not important in this regard; just as each person will perceive Bilbo and Frodo differently in Tolkien’s books, Tolkien had his own view of Beowulf that he kept in mind while creating the beloved protagonists of Middle-Earth. The inspiration is what counts.

Fittingly, Tolkien was a Beowulf scholar: he published essays on this very subject before gaining fame for his own works of fiction. In Tolkien’s “highly influential” essay, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” he “maintains that the Beowulf poem is primarily a kind of elegy for the departed hero, who, in this poetic enshrining of the past, enables a past culture both to survive and to be reborn” (Hobby and Bloom 35). It is logical that Tolkien would want to reignite this culture himself in Lord of the Rings. In his essay, Tolkien proclaims the following:

Let us by all means esteem the old heroes: men caught in the chains of circumstance or of their own character, torn between duties equally sacred, dying with their backs to the wall. But Beowulf, I fancy, plays a larger part than is recognized in helping us to esteem them (36).

His “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” was published in 1936, which preceded any of his original publications for stories making up the Lord of the Rings saga; therefore, it’s possible to theorize that Tolkien was pondering Beowulf and writing his masterpiece at the same time. In fact, Tolkien published The Hobbit the following year in 1937. Unsurprisingly, he ended up writing a fantastic hero very similar to the Beowulf he carefully studied.

Tolkien’s characters would come to embody a combination of the ancient hero archetypes and his own devout Catholicism. According to Clark, “Tolkien sought a true hero motivated by a heroic ideal consistent with his own religious and moral ideas, but he could not rid himself of his desire for the glorious heroes of old” (39). Later, Clark explains that “The Beowulf poet whom Tolkien imagined was a learned Christian who re-created a heroic world and story in an implicitly Christian universe” and that “Tolkien’s Beowulf poet was a version of himself” (40). The setting of the world Tolkien created is also implicitly Christian, meaning that even though it doesn’t explicitly reference a deity, it follows similar religious guidelines to the ones we see in Christianity: Tolkien includes destiny, betrayal, and even a company of thirteen in The Hobbit, just like at the Last Supper. The characters in LOTR, however, bear a great resemblance to Beowulf, specifically in the way that he “[epitomizes] warrior values – bravery and physical prowess – on an epic, larger‐than‐life scale” (Falk). For example, Gandalf defends his company against a giant, fire-breathing Balrog (Fellowship) and Bilbo intrepidly taunts the huge dragon, Smaug (Hobbit). There is also an element of “do or die,” as Falk expands on: “here [Beowulf] commits to exerting himself to his fullest extent in Hroðgar's service, underscoring that he means to die before he fails in his task.” There are many heroes that meet their doom in Tolkien’s epic, but the most fitting is Thorin Oakenshield’s passing at the end of The Hobbit: after redeeming his family line and reclaiming the mountains of treasure that are his birthright, he is honorably slain in the Battle of the Five Armies. Thorin’s obsession with wealth and honor are also reminiscent of Beowulf. As Clark says, “avenging wrongs to members of one’s in-group… had a positive value” and “a heroic venture is frequently said to be conducted… for wealth and fame,” which would explain why these normally questionable actions are so prevalent in LOTR. Even if the fantasy genre was modernized and popularized by Tolkien, the heroes of LOTR clearly follow Beowulf’s path. Despite the characters’ interesting personalities, their actions and their stories are not exactly new—on the contrary, these heroes have been around for a long time.

Despite being published in the mid-20th century, The Hobbit and LOTR have inspired, and continue to inspire, each new generation of readers. It’s important to recall that the hero archetype we see in these novels, as well in the movies based on the writing, relies on the descriptions found in Beowulf, the famous poem from centuries ago. This hero has persisted into the 21st century, and it seems determined to stay. It’s thanks to Tolkien’s revival of that hero that when someone mentions heroic feats, our first thought may be a brave knight battling a ferocious dragon for the keys to the kingdom. This has relevance to our everyday life: as Mary Podles puts it, “Our ordinary lives really do have a form off the big screen: We are in training for monsters, hoping that we also could come through in extraordinary circumstances, in the event of the big exam that may never come.” The duality of mankind - the age-old battle between good and evil - ensures that the story of the hero will forever remain relevant.

Word count: 1117

Works Cited

Clark, George. "JRR Tolkien and the True Hero." Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy 89 (2000): 39-52. JSTOR.

Falk, Oren. “A Dark Age Peter Principle: Beowulf’s Incompetence Threshold.” Early Medieval Europe, vol. 18, no. 1, Feb. 2010, pp. 2–25. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/j.1468-0254.2009.00288.x.

Hobby, Blake, and Harold Bloom. Rebirth and Renewal. Facts on File, Inc, 2009. EBSCOhost.

Podles, Mary Elizabeth. “Training for Monsters.” American Enterprise, vol. 11, no. 6, Sept. 2000, p. 4. EBSCOhost.

Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel. “Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics.” Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. XXII, 1936, pp. 245- 95. Semantic Scholar. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/91af/2321967a9bac3a2eaf57b7ae763cd9475ba4.pdf Accessed 15 March 2020.

---. The Fellowship of the Ring. Houghton Mifflin, 1954.

---. The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1937.

---. The Return of the King. Houghton Mifflin, 1954.

---. The Two Towers. Houghton Mifflin, 1954.