The Epic Hero: The Beowulf Poet

Throughout time a few things haven’t changed in storytelling, heroes being one of them. Every great story has a hero of some sort, the thing that has changed is how our beloved heroes are looked at and how the act. There is the Epic Hero, who focuses on glory, the Romantic Hero, whose drive is love, the Tragic Hero, who ends up dying for a cause, and the Postmodern Hero, who is a hero but doesn’t understand why.

In the poem Beowulf written by The Beowulf Poet, the hero is classified as an Epic Hero. Beowulf, the hero, is defined by how much treasure he wins, how many battles he has won, and how much honor he has. Beowulf defeats Grendel, battle won, he defeats a dragon and gains tons of treasure, treasure, and he becomes king of the kingdom,

A Postmodern Hero usually has an existential crisis, and they think a lot. In Grendel, Grendel, the monster from Beowulf, gets to tell his story. Throughout the entire book, he goes back and forth whether or not he is human or monster. In the end, he cannot decide and he is fatally killed. Likewise, in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, from Hamlet, are trying to decide if they are real, or just in a play. Throughout this play, they both try to prove either that they are real or in a play but never come to a conclusion. Also like Grendel, they both die. From these two examples, you can tell those people from after WWII till the late 1900’s didn’t know what to think anymore. They were in shock and had no idea what to think of their life. Their heroes had to be in the same mindset as them, as shown in both Grendel and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are

They just don’t have the same characteristics throughout time. People change from era to era so the heroes have to change with them, so people can relate back to them. The world has seen the Epic Hero, the Romantic Hero, the Tragic Hero, and the Postmodern Hero. Many people think that right now the world is in a different era, so our hero has changed characteristics from the Postmodern Hero. Although, others argue and still believe that we are in the Postmodern era. It is still too soon to tell, but in 20 years there will be an answer to what era this is and how the beloved hero has