“Beowulf”
“Beowulf” is a poem that details the life of a man named Beowulf. In the poem, Beowulf is the heroic prince and eventual King of the Geats known for his extreme strength and courage when battling seemingly undefeatable enemies. Three of the enemies Beowulf faced in this poem include a man-eating monster named Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and a dragon. In the end, Beowulf dies a hero, and the Geats built a memorial in his honor. Throughout the poem, the author uses metonymy in various sentences to express a specific word differently. Unlike a metaphor, metonymy associates one word or phrase with a related term, while metaphors substitute one word with another (“Difference Between Metaphor and Metonymy”). For example, the sentence ‘the beast on the other team crushed our team’ would be a metonymy because the word “beast” does not act as a substitute for a character trait. Instead, it associates the basketball player with a beast because of their aggressive nature. In the poem “Beowulf,” the author illustrates the heroic journey of a warrior named Beowulf while using metonymy to express words and phrases in different but similar ways.
The first monster in the poem, Grendel, is a monster described as “a fiend out of hell” (“Beowulf,” line 100) who terrorized the Danes. At night, Grendel would sneak into the clan’s village, kidnap the warriors, and devour them. After hearing about the hardships caused by Grendel, Beowulf decided to sail to the Danes’ village along with a group of his warriors to defeat Grendel. Once he arrived, Beowulf nobly defeated Grendel with his bare hands because Grendel did not use weapons when attacking the warriors. As a trophy, Beowulf kept Grendel’s arm. Before the battle between Beowulf and Grendel, the author used metonymy when describing what Beowulf wished to happen with his armor if he died during the fight: “If the battle takes me, send back / this breast-webbing that Weland fashioned / and Hrethel gave me, to Lord Hygelac” (lines 452–454). In the phrase “If the battle takes me” (line 452), Grendel is associated with the battle because both have a violent, murderous nature. Due to the association between the word “battle” and Grendel, this phrase displays a metonymy.
The next creature Beowulf defeated was Grendel’s mother. After Grendel’s death, his mother attacked the clan and killed one of Hrothgar’s counselors in the process of avenging her son. Soon after, Hrothgar summoned Beowulf and asked him to defeat the “monstrous hell-bride” (“Beowulf,” line 1259). During the underwater battle, Grendel’s mother almost proved to be too mighty for Beowulf; however, he stumbled upon an ancient heirloom “from the days of the giants” (line 1559) that was capable of slaying her. In the end, Beowulf won and returned to shore with Grendel’s head and the hilt of the sword that killed Grendel’s mother. While Beowulf and Hrogthar’s men were waiting for Beowulf to resurface, blood that had risen to the surface led some to believe “that the wolf of the deep had destroyed him forever” (line 1599). The author used this metonymy to associate Grendel’s mother with a wolf because both are sneaky, vicious creatures. Because of the close association between the characteristics of Grendel’s mother and a wolf, this quote is another metonymy used by the author.
The last monster Beowulf faced is a dragon. The dragon began attacking the Geats after a slave stole a golden cup that the dragon was guarding. As a result, the dragon routinely assaulted the lands of the Geat clan with fire during the night. Although Beowulf knew that death was approaching him when he decided to confront the dragon, he refused to “line up with a large army / against the sky plague” (“Beowulf, lines 2346–2347). Out of the handful of men he did bring, all failed to come to his aid except for one warrior named Wiglaf. They defeated the dragon together, but Beowulf, unfortunately, suffered a poisonous bite. The author used metonymy when they called the dragon a “sky plague” (line 2347). In this phrase, the author associates the dragon with the plague because both have deadly characteristics.
Overall, the author of the poem “Beowulf” uses metonymy throughout the piece while portraying the life of a heroic warrior named Beowulf. The examples in this essay that describe specific events and characters of Beowulf’s battles are a few of the instances where the author uses metonymy in the poem. The purpose of using these phrases was to emphasize the viciousness of the characters Beowulf fought.
Works Cited:
“Difference Between Metaphor and Metonymy | Difference Between.” Difference Between Similar Terms and Objects, 8 June 2016, www.differencebetween.net/language/difference-between-metaphor-and-metonymy/. Accessed 16 July 2021.
Heaney, Seamus. Beowulf. W. W. Norton & Company, 2001. Accessed 16 July 2021.
