Essay On Bravery In Antigone And Beowulf

In the story Antigone, Antigone’s brother, Polynices, is killed in battle. Polyneices had led an army to attack Thebes, and this act was deemed unforgivable by King Creon. Creon regards Polynices’ body to be unworthy of a proper burial and

Beowulf is considered a mythic hero because there are three types of passages in “ The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. The first type is the separation, which is where the hero decides to go on an adventure to do good things and save lives. An example of this is when Beowulf hears about grendel and decides himself to go and make a difference and defeat Grendel. The second type is initiation, which is the hero actually doing the things that

The idea of a hero is explored differently in the ancient Anglo-Saxon text Beowulf and John Gardner’s Grendel. During the time period of both of the stories being a hero is very important to everyone. Beowulf is not a true hero, even if he tries to make himself out to seem like a true hero, based on modern ideas of the Hero. In the poem Beowulf being a hero is very important to the main character Beowulf.

Beowulf accepts Hrothgar's favor to fight Grendel, and Beowulf goes off and boasts about his accomplishments. He fights Grendel and wins! Towards the end, Beowulf dies due to a dragon bite. Grendel does not deserve sympathy because he invaded the Mead Hall, killed humans, and was irredeemable. Grendel invades the Mead Hall unwelcome by the humans.

He then announces that Eteocles will have a proper burial, since he holds more respect in Creon’s mind. But Polyneices, Eteocles’ brother, will be left out for the animals to eat. Polyneices started the war for the throne, and to Creon, he is much less deserving of his respect, so he will not be

Antigone: Gender Difference and Power As we are all aware that for generations, gender difference and power have been an issue for centuries. That being said the play Antigone by Sophocles, displays many examples of these struggles. The main topics that will be discussed, are: Antigone’s background history in Oedipus the King, the conflict between Creon the king of Thebes and Antigone, the gender difference and power. In order to know who Antigone is, you must know some of her and her families background, which is from the play of Oedipus the King.

He states, “Exactly when did you last see the gods / celebrating traitors? Inconceivable!” (Sophocles 326-327). This delivers the argument in reference to Antigone’s beliefs of glory that it is merely impossible to imagine the gods giving glory to those who honor traitors, regardless of their relation to one another. He is stating the unimportance of following the laws set by the gods in regards to dealing with citizens who have the incentive to become traitors of their own city.

Beowulf makes known that “no man but [himself] could hope to defeat this monster, [and] no one could try.” Beowulf wants to have this fight all to himself, so he can take all of the glory. He is too selfish to conclude that only he could defeat the monster alone. Beowulf cannot be thought of as a hero because “Beowulf only longed for fame.” Beowulf does not perform heroic deeds just to save the citizens, but to receive more admiration from the citizens.

Throughout the poem, Beowulf fights three different monsters and in each of these situations he chooses to begin the fight without their help. He enters into combat with his men by his side, but when the actual fighting begins he defeats the monsters with very little help from them. Beowulf’s strength and physical prowess was unlike any other man in comparison to his height and incredible grip. Furthermore, Beowulf can be categorized as an outcast based on his personality traits. The main character is set apart from the other warriors because of his courage and humility.

Bravery, defined as, courageous acts of one’s character. The main person in this epic poem to demonstrate the act of bravery would be, Beowulf himself. Beowulf’s battle with Grendel shows true courage. Beowulf then “took off the helmet and handed the patterned sword”. (672-673)He was completely unarmed as described in the lines previous.

Polyneices was known as a traitor to Thebes and that is why Creon made the law that Polyneices could not be buried. Even though Antigone was aware of this she was not ready to just leave her brother’s carcass unburied and completely open to animals like birds and dogs. The law was not thought through by creon at all, Creon’s son Haimon even tells his dad that him killing Antigone is guaranteed to bring upon more deaths. Creon started to believe that Haimon had turned over to a criminal, his fiance Antigone, but Haimon re assures Creon that he listens to his father and has the most respect for him. Even though Haimon tells this to Creon, Haimon still tells the King Creon that he is wrong and that the people are talking in town, Haimon says “But I, at any rate, can listen; and i have heard them muttering and whispering in the dark about this

The definition of heroism is great bravery. Bravery is what Beowulf displays when he makes the decision to battle the monsters. Beowulf's courage is exposed multiple times during the battles for example, "The dragon burns Beowulf's hall with fiery breath, and the old king sets out to fight him unaided" (Hanning 9). This detail displays that although the dragon is evil and might, Beowulf shows no fear whatsoever when battling them. Beowulf ignores the possibility of there being an adverse outcome during every battle he continues to fight.

Creon says, “but his brother Polyneices, who broke his exile to come back with fire and sword against his native city and the shrines of his father’s gods, whose one idea was to sill the blood and sell his own people into slavery – Polyneices, I say, is to have no burial: no man is to touch him or say the least prayer for him;

The burial ritual was very important to those who believed in mythology, as it was what allowed them to cross over into the afterlife. According to tradition, an entire body must be preserved or it cannot cross over. Creon wanted to leave Polyneices’ body to be eaten by wild animals so he would be unable to cross over. Antigone buried her brother anyway and when Creon found out, he threw her in prison. As the story goes on, the general opinion begins to change and more characters begin to side with Antigone.

In Beowulf, a wide variety of aspects are portrayed but only one of them captivates the reader the most: Beowulf’s battles between Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon. They all share similarities and differences and each of the opponents symbolize different things. Firstly, all three of Beowulf’s battles are similar in some way.