The Power of Fear Fear is a power harnessed by evil to gain an advantage over good. Some forms of evil, such as the monsters in Beowulf, use this intense power to such an extent that they embody individual human fears to completely control and annihilate their enemies. Of the three monsters Beowulf faces in his life, the fatal foe, the unstoppable dragon most effectively embodies fear. Through the perils of its lair and its poisonous fangs, “the ground-burner” embodies man’s fear of inevitable death (2713). After finding the man who awoke the beast, the Geats encounter the dragon’s home. Beowulf enters “an underground barrow near the sea-billows” to face his enemy alone as his men wait outside on the crag (2411). The beast’s lair symbolizes