Beowulf
Beowulf is a timeless Old English poem told centuries ago from an anonymous author who remains unknown. This poem has all the elements of the Anglo-Saxon culture and time period from its many mentions of treasure being a reward for the heroic acts to the warrior mentality of Beowulf. Every time he is met with a creature he seems to test his limits and has the mindset of wanting to do things his way or the manly way. By doing so it creates a very dangerous setting for him, which ultimately ends up with him still being alive to bask in his glory amongst his people. These old and dated characteristics of this story are what make it what it is and a very interesting read still thousands of years later. But all the heroic acts and all the great that Beowulf was, this story kind of makes you sympathize with the so called “monster” in a way. They did not ask to be fought with, sort of. These monsters just simply did not like their peace being disturbed like any normal person. I feel as though Beowulf could also be seen and portrayed as a monster himself by definition since he basically commits murder multiple times to these creatures. Yet, he is praised amongst everyone and rewarded for doing so. Eventually in the end I believe he gets what was coming to him all along.
This poem uses many interesting and smart literary devices to tell the story in a different and more complex way, like Old English sometimes was. One of them famously being metonymy, sometimes confused as a metaphor or a synecdoche, which is used to replace the meaning of an object with something related to it. The use of metonymy in ‘Beowulf’ had a lot of impact on the way it was perceived and told since most things were not blatantly being described such as a “sword” sometimes. It made the story alone not boring to read because you had to connect the dots to what things actually meant what they were originally meant to be. Metonymy has been a part of literature and poems for a very long time now and we even use it in our own speech without noticing it. It is a really neat way of making a story more straightforward or to the point instead of using so many words to describe something. Also, metonymy only really makes sense or works in certain moments of a story. Not every word will be a replacement of something most of the time. It all depends on what is being talked about and when it is being talked about.
A specific example of metonymy in ‘Beowulf’ is in the line “Everybody said there was no honed iron hard enough to pierce him through,” (Line 986–988). In this case, iron would mean a sword or weapon made out of iron, not necessarily just iron. The author uses metonymy to not specifically tell the reader a certain weapon being used, but to let them think of a weapon in their mind connected with the word iron, and most people would think of a sword. It is a pretty common replacement in this story along with steel and other elements. I think letting the reader figure out and wonder what a word could possibly mean or tie to is a brilliant way of writing and should be used more often in modern literature, or at least get more recognition.
Beowulf was a very interesting and traditional poem that perfectly describes most of what Anglo-Saxon and Christianity culture was centuries ago. I really liked the approach of this story and its ending even though it is not necessarily a happy one it was still a great way to wrap it up.
