Beowulf as an Epic essays

Beowulf as an Epic essays I just finished watching Blue Streak, the story of a criminal who is forced to become a police officer in order to recover a diamond that he had hidden before he was arrested for a heist. In the movie, Martin Lawrence is a the protagonist, and as a typical audience member, I hope that he will succeed in whatever his goal is, in this case, to safely recover his diamond, and not end up in jail for a second term. This remains to be true for me throughout the entire movie, even though my introduction to this character is seeing him get arrested for stealing a diamond, and then watching him get dumped for not even calling his girlfriend while he was in jail. Nowadays, it seems that the hero of any story can gain the sympathy and support of his audience, but in the Anglo-Saxen time period, heroes has to follow specific guidelines in order to be respected and accepted as a hero. In the poem entitled, Beowulf, translated by , a normal man named Beowulf is able to b ecome one of the most memorable heroes of British literature through the story-tellers use of the Anglo-Saxen heroic ideal. One of the reasons that Beowulf is such a popular example of the heroic ideal is his willingness to risk anything of his own in order to help others. His courage is displayed early in the poem, while he explains his adventures of killing monsters in the ocean. He says I drove five great giants into chains, chased all of that lace from the earth, swam in the blackness of night, hunting monsters out of the ocean, and killing them one by one. Beowulfs determination to kill the sea-monsters becomes part of his promise to save the Danes from Grendel, and also promises to the readers that this tale is sure to be as filled with action and adventure as his adventures in the sea. Later, Beowulf acknowledges the fact that Grendel needs no weapons and fears none; he then decides that he will n...

Drown essays

Drown essays The story of immigrant struggles is the major theme in "Drown" by Junot Diaz. Every immigrant has a personal story, pains and joys, fears and victories, and DÃ ­az portrays much of his own story of immigrant life in Drown, a collection of 10 short stories. This book captures the fury and alienation of the Dominican immigrant experience very well. Other immigrants' grief's also come up in DÃ ­az's short stories. My argument for this paper delves with the question of is this book merely storytelling or is it autobiographical? Also, it seemed to me as if he uses some symbols and specific words (mostly verbs) to express himself in a manner which the reader can almost feel the story as if it were real. The book tells of the barrios of the Dominican Republic and the struggling urban communities of New Jersey. This book is very strong and these stories tell of a sense of discovery from a young man's perspective. It seems as though for the immigrants, even when things are at their best, a high probability of calamity looms just around the corner. Uncertainty is the only certainty for these outsiders, who live in communities that, are "separated from all the other communities by a six-lane highway and the dump." It tells of a world in which fathers are gone; mothers fight with determination for their families and themselves. Drown brings out the conflicts, yearnings, and frustrations that have been a part of immigrant life for centuries. Diaz himself lived in such a world. In each of his stories Diaz uses a first-person narrator who is observing others. Boys and young drug dealers narrate eight of these tales. Their struggles shift from life in the barrios of the Dominican Republic to grim existence in the slums of New Jersey. These young boys could be the voice of Junot Diaz himself. If so, why would the book be a fiction? The characters in these stories wrestle with recognizable traumas. Yunior and Rafa in "Ysrael" and "Fie ...