Blooms Literary Themes - THE HEROS ... - ymerleksi - home

32Beowulfinterest of his character. He is more variable, more dramatic, than theking and queen of the Danes, or any of the secondary personages.Wealhtheo, the queen, represents the poetical idea of a noble lady.There is nothing complex or strongly dramatic in her character.Hunferth, the envious man, brought in as a foil to Beowulf, is notcaricatured or exaggerated. His sourness is that of a critic and a politician,disinclined to accept newcomers on their own valuation. He isnot a figure of envy in a moral allegory.In the latter part of the poem it is impossible to find in the characterof Wiglaf more than the general and abstract qualities of the“loyal servitor.”Yet all those abstract and typical characters are introduced in sucha way as to complete and fill up the picture. The general impressionis one of variety and complexity, though the elements of it are simpleenough.With a plot like that of Beowulf it might seem that there wasdanger of a lapse from the more serious kind of heroic compositioninto a more trivial kind. Certainly there is nothing in the plain storyto give much help to the author; nothing in Grendel to fascinate ortempt a poet with a story made to his hand.The plot of Beowulf is not more serious than that of a thousandeasy-going romances of chivalry, and of fairy tales beyond allnumber.The strength of what may be called an epic tradition is shownin the superiority of Beowulf to the temptations of cheap romanticcommonplace. Beowulf, the hero, is, after all, something differentfrom the giant-killer of popular stories, the dragonslayer of theromantic schools. It is the virtue and the triumph of the poet ofBeowulf that when all is done the characters of the poem remaindistinct in the memory, that the thoughts and sentiments of the poemare remembered as significant, in a way that is not the way of thecommon romance. Although the incidents that take up the principalpart of the scene of Beowulf are among the commonest in popularstories, it is impossible to mistake the poem for one of the ordinarytales of terror and wonder. The essential part of the poem is the dramaof characters; though the plot happens to be such that the charactersare never made to undergo a tragic ordeal like that of so many of theother Teutonic stories. It is not incorrect to say of the poem of Beowulf