Smaug The Dragon Research Paper

Dragons Growing up, everyone has heard tales of the mythical beasts that breathe fire and cut through the blue skies with magnificent wings. The dragons were most likely were either terrorizing villages or befriending the protagonists of bedtime stories. Throughout the stories, dragons have similar concepts and some completely opposite ones. Smaug the dragon from The Hobbit, St. George’s dragon, and the Midgard serpent, also known as Jormungand are some examples of dragons told in these tales. Their differences range from the elements they represent, personalities, and physical appearances. In Christian mythology, long ago there lived a dragon in the province of Libya who terrorized the citizens of a nearby town. He stole their maidens and breathed his poisonous breath for twenty-four years. He resided in “a pond like a sea” ( de Voragine Web), with skin harder than brass. In Norse mythology, there was another dragon, or sea serpent, named Jormungand, who was so large his coils wrapped around the

The dragon in St. George’s myth appears with scales on his body that shone like glittering brass(Lansing) and was 50 feet long. Smaug the dragon is described as being “a vast red-golden dragon” (Tolkien 206) with armor is like tenfold shields, teeth like swords, and claws like spears (Tolkien 216). In the end of both tales, each dragon ended up dying by a sword being impaled on the tender underbelly of both dragons, in a patch of missing scales. The color scheme of both dragons are also similar in reds and golds, while the color of the Midgard serpent is never specified in any of the myths the serpent appeared in. Jormungand the Midgard serpent is a long serpent that encircles the earth and holds its tail in its mouth, and has a dragon’s head and no wings, often depicted as a uroboros. The only similarity in appearance that Jormungand shares with the other two dragons is his