Unlike other great heroes who are recorded in history manuscripts and considered to be related to the Gods in some way whereby they be gods themselves or demi-gods or even to be a visionary weapon which once was of the gods, there is no indication of Beowulf being related to such imagery. This epic fable of Beowulf becomes more amazing due to him just being a mere mortal. Which allows us the ‘reader’ to believe that no matter what blood you have coursing through your veins we can be just as great as Beowulf but also, we cannot avoid death who ever we are.
‘He ruled it well for fifty winters, grew old and wise as the warden of the land until one began to dominate the dark, a dragon on the prowl...’, This is the beginning of the final act of this epic and as the quote tells us Beowulf has become an old person, so one would assume that he would be aged in his early eighties, allowing for the events within the poem. This age in that period would have been unheard of and it’s astonishing to think that a person of that age would be up for fighting but the next word to describe him is slightly paradoxical due to being ‘wise’ he wouldn’t have gone to fight the dragon himself because he held the reigns of peace over these lands. This also demonstrates to us that he is warrior to the bitter end of his life span and Beowulf throws down the gauntlet and fights to defend his Kingdom. Beowulf was the guardian of his peoples’ land to the very end because that was the responsibility that was betrothed to him.
The dragon’s destruction is due to a thief stealing from the dragon not for glory but for wealth and greed. The thief did not mean to enrage the dragon by stealing from the cavern of glistening treasures and would not let go of the gem-studded goblet as he ran away, leaving the people of the lands to the dragon’s wrath. The massive hoard of treasures the dragon kept watch over was not collected by the dragon but amassed by a magpie of nobility or a peasant. With the treasure trove hoarded in secrecy and no one to stand guard over it the dragon came and took claim of the hoard. The dragon had been in the barrow for three centuries. Now with one of his treasures stolen the dragon begins to wreak havoc on the local Geats but only at night. ‘The dragon began to belch out flames and burn bright homesteads; there was a hot glow that scared everyone, for the vile sky-winger would leave nothing alive in his wake. If this story sounds familiar to you then you must be thinking of The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien when Bilbo Baggins steals a cup from Smaug’s Lair, causing the dragon to be enraged and destroy the lake town and get himself killed in the process (the film adaption is slightly different to the book). Another variance to the epic is that Smaug unlike the dragon in Beowulf has the power of speech so Bilbo can try and reason with the beast.
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