Examples Of Eternal Rewards In Beowulf

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O flower of warriors, beware of that trap.Choose, dear Beowulf, the better part, eternal rewards. Do not give way to pride.For a brief while your strength is in bloom but it fades quickly; and soon there will follow illness or the sword to lay you low, or a sudden fire or surge of water or jabbing blade or javelin from the air or repellent age. Your piercing eye will dim and darken; and death will arrive, dear warrior, to sweep you away. (1758–1768).
This passage is the peak of a long speech, often referred to as “Hrothgar’s sermon,” where Hrothgar warns Beowulf of the dangers of success after Beowulf defeats Grendel’s mother. Hrothgar claims that power causes the soul to be distracted with selfishness. The speech is one of many …show more content…
Throughout the poem, however, it seems that eternal rewards can be won only through worldly success—the reward of fame for being a valiant warrior. Hrothgar expresses the brief quality of human life in beautiful terms. Calling Beowulf the “flower of warriors,” he depicts an image that doesn’t evoke Beowulf’s strength and fortitude but instead emphasizes the fragility of his life and the fact that his youth—his “bloom”—will “fade …show more content…
Beowulf’s reminder to Hrothgar that vengeance is a real warrior’s response. The truest sign of love and loyalty reflects a value of warrior culture. Beowulf, for example, perceives life as a race to glory “Let whoever can / win glory before death”. This speech captures the poem’s tension between doom and death, on the one hand, and the necessity of behaving honorably, on the other. Going back to line 99 an up when there is a reference to Cain and Abel. In the Bible, Cain and Abel were the sons of Adam and Eve. Cain murdered his brother in an act of passion and was punished by God; he was marked and suffered to work hard on the ground. Cain was essentially shunned from society for committing this horrible crime. In Beowulf, we are introduced to Grendel, a monster who is murdering Hrothgar's men for sport. Grendel is described as a monster and is related to Cain: Till the monster stirred, that demon, that fiend Grendel who haunted the moors, the wild marshes, and made his home in a hell. Not hell but hell on earth. He was spawned in that slime of Cain, murderous creatures banished by God, punished forever for the crime of Abel's death.' Like Cain, Grendel has committed horrendous crimes and is shunned from society as a punishment. The difference between
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