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39 pages 1 hour read

Transl. Seamus Heaney

Beowulf

Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult | Published in 1000

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Pages 1-57Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Pages 1-15 Summary

The first verses of Beowulf ground us in a world of heroic kings, pagan traditions, and Christian belief. With a bold introductory “Hwaet” (“So” in Heaney’s translation), we are launched into the warlike world of the Spear-Danes.

The story begins with a genealogy, tracing the descent of the present prince Hrothgar through his ancestors Shield Sheafson, Beow, and Halfdane. These ancestors were heroic kings, as evidenced by Shield’s glorious funeral, in which his body was pushed out to sea on a treasure-ship: 

Far fetched treasures
were piled upon him, and precious gear.
I never heard before of a ship so well furbished
with battle tackle, bladed weapons
and coats of mail” (5). 

This is a culture that worships valor and ancestry, and that honors the dead in ways inflected by both pagan and Christian belief.

We come then to Hrothgar’s reign. A great prince, Hrothgar builds Heorot, a glorious mead-hall (a sort of combined fortress and gathering-place) as a testament to his own power and a gift to future generations. Everyone marvels at this mead-hall. 

However, all is not well. Out in the woods, a demonic creature named Grendel—according to the poem’s speaker, a monster from the lineage of Cain—is lurking. Lonely, outcast, deformed, and resentful of the camaraderie and beauty of Heorot, Grendel conducts terrible raids on it, butchering 30 men at a time. He returns at intervals for 12 years, and no one can figure out how to stop him.

Pages 15-35 Summary

Meanwhile, across the sea, a Geat leader from the court of King Hygelac has heard of Hrothgar’s troubles, and vows to sail to help him. When he and his men arrive, a sentry confronts them, demanding to know who they are and what they want, since the newcomer is obviously “no mere/hanger-on in a hero’s armour” (19). The hero announces his own lineage and his intention to help, and the sentry allows them to pass. 

When the men arrive at Heorot, the hero announces himself: He is Beowulf. It turns out that Hrothgar already knows him, having met him as a young boy; Beowulf was the son of Hrothgar’s ally, Ecgtheow. Hrothgar is delighted to see Beowulf, and vows that if Beowulf can defeat Grendel, he will reward his heroism with treasure.

Beowulf tells Hrothgar of his past epic victories against monsters, and proposes a plan. He wishes to fight Grendel with only his own men to assist him. What’s more, he means to defeat the monster in hand-to-hand combat, without weapons.

Hrothgar tells Beowulf how he became allies with Beowulf’s father: Ecgtheow had started a terrible feud, and Hrothgar made peace with him through an offering of treasure. Hrothgar is sorry that he must now ask for so much help, but Grendel’s attacks are too much to bear: 

Time and again, when the goblets passed
and seasoned fighters got flushed with beer
they would pledge themselves to protect Heorot […]
But when dawn broke and day crept in
over each empty, blood-spattered bench,
the floor of the mead-hall where they had feasted
would be slick with slaughter’” (33).

Hrothgar invites Beowulf to sit down to a feast, and the Geats and Danes party and listen to the minstrels singing.

Pages 35-47 Summary

The court is not without internal strife. Unferth, one of Hrothgar’s men, is jealous of Beowulf, and brings up some of his past history: 

Are you the Beowulf who took on Breca
in a swimming match on the open sea,
risking the water just to prove that you could win?
[...] and then he outswam you,
came ashore the stronger contender (35). 

Beowulf takes up this veiled challenge, and explains that he lost the swimming match not because he was the poorer swimmer, but because he, unlike his friend Breca, stayed out at sea slaughtering monsters for five nights. He insults Unferth, telling him that his courage in speaking up like this seems to come more from beer than from valor, and that if Unferth were half the man he claims to be, he’d have killed Grendel himself.

At this point, Hrothgar’s queen, Wealhtheow, arrives. She carries a ceremonial drinking-cup around the hall, and Beowulf assures her of his plan to kill Grendel. Pleased, Wealhtheow joins Hrothgar. The hall grows cheerful and noisy like in old times; all the Danes are confident of Beowulf’s power.

At the end of the evening, Hrothgar and his men retire, and Beowulf prepares for battle. As he’d earlier said he would, he takes off all his armor and puts aside his weapons, and prays that God will give the victory to whomever He sees fit. He and his men go to sleep in the mead-hall.

The narrative here gives us a little preview. While Beowulf’s Geats all lie down to sleep expecting to die with Beowulf, “the Lord was weaving/a victory on his war-loom for the Weather-Geats”—a prophecy that, the poem says, shows that God has ultimate power over humankind (47).

Pages 47-57 Summary

At last, inevitably, Grendel comes loping over the moors to Heorot. He’s maddened and full of bloodlust: “a baleful light/more flame than light, flared from his eyes” (47). As soon as he enters the hall, he kills and messily devours one of Beowulf’s men. Beowulf catches up with him afterwards, and they wrestle so vigorously that Heorot shakes. Grendel is full of fear and pain. It turns out that he can’t be defeated with a weapon, and he’s never faced anyone in unarmed combat. Beowulf’s tremendous strength makes Grendel panic and long to run back to his lair. However, Beowulf does not let go, and at last, he wrenches Grendel’s arm from its socket. Mortally wounded, Grendel flees back to the swamp he came from and sinks into it to die, leaving “loathsome upthrows and overturnings/of waves and gore and wound-slurry” behind him (57). Beowulf hangs Grendel’s severed arm from the rafters of Heorot as a trophy.

Pages 1-57 Analysis

The first scenes of Beowulf ground us in a hierarchical, valor-based, and patriarchal culture. The tenets of this society are few and firm: warrior clans choose kings for their heroism, wisdom, and generosity; gifts of treasure cement allegiances and symbolize power; strict codes of conduct regulate fighting and friendship alike.

Into this world comes a chaotic shadow. Grendel, described as a monster descended from Cain, is anathema to the culture of the Danes and the Geats. All of his monstrous qualities—envy, isolation, selfishness, greed, bloodlust—mirror the impulses that culture seeks to control. His monstrosity does not rest in his difference from humanity, but in his likeness to it. He is the perfect foil to the society he plagues.

Beowulf enters this landscape as a figure of what, to a modern reader, may read as almost cartoonish heroism. He is the consummate warrior: courageous, courteous, and capable of wrestling monsters to death with his bare hands. As Grendel is the antithesis of this culture, Beowulf is its ideal—the absolute pinnacle of human capacity. 

Part of Beowulf’s power rests in his piety. While the warlike world of the Spear-Danes now reads as pagan, with its pyre funerals and treasure-hoards, its underlying philosophy is Christian. Before and after every battle, Beowulf prays not for victory, but for the will of God to be done. Beowulf’s strength is superhuman because of his submission to a higher power—the source of his special qualities as a hero.

The first part of the poem also gets us familiar with the rolling rhythms of Old English verse. Seamus Heaney’s translation is careful to preserve the hallmarks of this poetic tradition, including strong caesurae (breaks in the middle of lines); copious alliteration, assonance and consonance (varieties of sound repetition); and kennings (hybrid words like “ring-giver” for “king” and “word-hoard” for “speech”). The language, like the culture it describes, is deeply idiosyncratic.

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