I have a friend who is Catholic. During some recent personal struggles, she wanted to quit – her job, her education, many of her responsibilities. She said, “No! Mary wouldn’t quit.” She did not compare her anticipated behavior to a list of Mary-sanctioned do’s and don’t’s. From reading and hearing Bible stories, she had shared Mary’s heroic experience. She had felt it. Mary, in the Bible, was never in a situation quite like hers, but she knew how Mary would act. So, too, the audience of Beowulf knows what it is to act as Beowulf, even though Beowulf is beyond human – or because of it.
I agree. An archetypal warrior such as Beowulf arouses in us the heroic experience to guide our own, inner hero better more completely than more-ordinary literary heroes. According to well-known theories of Karl Jung and Joseph Campbell, this is one of the functions heroic stories perform for us in all cultures.
In The Hero Within, Carol Pearson explains that the warrior archetype drives us toward our own competence and power. It pushes us to be able to earn our own living, stand our own ground, and take pride in our achievements. In the first part of Beowulf, he accomplishes these things. Not well respected in Geatland, he set forth to Heorot to defeat Grendal and win fame. He does beat him; “… he was happy with his nightwork / and the courage he had shown”. A song is made about him, and he has earned great renown and riches. But the warrior can also go astray.
This is Beowulf in the second part of the story, the tragedy.
Beowulf has had a life of success after success and fifty years of good rule. He has been the strength of his people. Now a new monster appears, and he feels fear, mainly existential. The story makes clear that a thief brought down the dragon, nearly by accident. But Beowulf is so egotistical, he assumes it is his own fault. Seeing such a powerful enemy, he believes only he can fight it. He gets a special metal shield made, “Yet the prince of the rings was too proud / to line up with a large army / against the sky plague”. Taking a small retinue of eleven men as he took twelve in his youth to Heorot, he goes to the barrow. He insists on facing the dragon alone. His men run. It is because he has not let them grow into warriors themselves, one of the primary responsibilities of a good leader. A long battle ensues with the dragon, during which young Wiglaf rejoins him and aids him.
That Beowulf dies in battle is not the tragedy of the story, however. He was going to die in the end no matter what. The tragedy is that he unwittingly destroys his people. He has left no one be king behind him. Because he fought all the battles himself, his men, even his honor guard, are weak. Wiglaf explains that they will be wiped from the face of the earth by their enemies because of the willfulness of Beowulf:
Against Grendal and his mother, Beowulf had to fight alone. Against the dragon, he should not have. The dark irony of warrior courage is that we must both learn to struggle alone and stand together like a shieldwall: a lesson Beowulf did not learn. But his inhuman, ahistorical, unrealistic life moves us through the transcendent fantasy of it all: the heroic experience. The poet has done his work; the mystery is done:
