Beowulf And Sir Gawain Character Analysis

Heroes are a major part in any story no matter how clear their heroism is. In the case of the characters, Beowulf and Sir Gawain, they are considered to be heroes. However, they are two different types of heroes even though they both show the key attributes that make them considered to be heroes; Beowulf is the brave idealistic hero whereas Sir Gawain is a noble knight who is also modest and cares a lot about what people think of him so much so that he tells a lie to keep up his reputation. In the epic poem Beowulf, the character Beowulf hears about a monster named Grendel tormenting the land Heorot, so “he announced his plan: to sail the swan’s road and seek out that king, the famous prince who needed defenders” to help fight the monster. (David and Simpson, Beowulf 46) Once there he defeats Grendel without any weapons, just his bravery, and strength. The next day after celebrating his victory, Beowulf discovers that they had been attacked by Grendel’s mother and that she

In Beowulf, the structure is really how you perceive it. You can look at it like the first two-thirds of the story is lumped together and the last third is separated because the ending really doesn’t need to be there, you could remove it and it would still make sense. (Kelley) “The poem of Beowulf consists of two distinct parts joined in a very loose manner and held together only by the person of the hero,” this is why a lot of people only see two parts because the ending is only tied into the story due to the main character it has nothing to do with the plot of the story. (Kelley) Others view the whole story as three different sections or quests. This conclusion is drawn because he had three different monsters he had to defeat. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, on the other hand, is viewed as three different parts because each part is important for the