Beowulf vs Achilles A soldier goes into battle and gets blown into a million pieces by a grenade. How will that soldier be remembered by his comrades and family? Will he be remember by how he died, his accomplishments throughout his life, or the courage that soldier had to charge into a battle knowing any breath might be his last one. Courage is a necessary trait for any man to become a soldier, risking his life for others or his country. Soldiers are thought to only fight for their country and their people, but that isn’t the case. Some soldiers fight for other reasons though, led by their ambitions brought on from their own traits. Stories have presented this scenario through time, showing what happens when a soldier loses sight of the …show more content…
Achilles, son of a goddess, has superior strength and fighting skills to any regular human, and as a baby he was dipped into the river Styx by his mother, leaving no part of his body vulnerable to attack but where she held him by his ankles. Beowulf on the other hand is the strongest man in the world of his time, having the strength to rip of the arm of a large monster named Grendel, and he is extremely tough, being able to survive the surge of a dragons fire breath that would have killed a normal man. Despite their physical traits, they both displayed acts of brutality and ruthlessness in their poems. Beowulf did so when he ripped off the arm of Grendel and hung it in the mead hall as a sign of victory, as well as when he defeated Grendel’s mother and took her head as a trophy. Achilles acts were almost just as vicious. When Hector died by Achilles hands, Achilles stripped him down to his naked body, let his followers come and stab his dead body repeatedly, then he pierced ropes through his tendons, and drug Hector around the city of Troy. In both instances, Beowulf and Achilles both took pride and joy in their murderous