Across the sea, in order to
help Hrothgar, comes this young warrior.
He's a Geat, Beowulf is, and Beowulf the Geat
comes across the sea, hearing of the disaster that's happening in Heorot,
comes across the sea in order to stop the attacks of Grendel
that are occurring at Heorot. And he doesn't come
just for the sake of saving Hrothgar, notice
he comes also for glory. He's a young man and he wants to distinguish himself
and so he comes to
help out Hrothgar, but at the same time
it's a question of generosity that Beowulf
risks his life in order to free
Heorot from this awful beast and he crosses the sea
from Geatland, which is in the north down to Denmark,
more southerly, and this is the first of
several water crossings in the story. If you notice throughout the story there are several times
where the hero crosses over water, or goes into water.
And the water crossing is something which
is a natural symbol. Natural symbolism
is one of two types of symbolism, natural and conventional,
and conventional is agreed upon by a society, arbitrary,
natural symbolism is where the image by its very nature has in it the things
that
convey ideas to us. And so water is a natural symbol, it symbolizes darkness, and
malleability, protean world
view, it symbolizes all that
metaphysical world and in this
water crossing there's an image of him traveling into another world,
crossing over a boundary into some other world. And Beowulf crosses over from Geattland
into Denmark in order to engage in this first major adventure
with Grendel. When he comes up to
the Daneland there's a watchman on the cliff
and this would have been necessary in time of war, a watchman looking out over
the water to see
if anybody was going to be invading so he can run quickly to tell his Lord
about who they were. And when he sees this ship
land on his shore with all these warriors, heavily armed warriors, getting off
the first thing that he thinks is we're being attacked and so he goes and he
confronts Beowulf
rather roughly, rather abruptly, saying who are you, and why have you come to these shores?
This is also a hostility that emerges out of this fear or
terror that Grendel has instilled into the court.
The Grendel's attacks are not just dangerous because they kill men
directly or because they make Heorot an empty place,
they're also dangerous because they spread a certain
mental disease or spiritual disease, a Grendel mentality,
which is the mentality of distrust, and fear, and hatred.
And the watchmen pose as something of a threat to Beowulf therefore,
because he is challenging him directly.
If Beowulf gets mad at him and attacks him then he turns all of the
Danes against him and his whole mission is lost.
If on the other hand, he gets attacked, then his missions is lost because he could be
killed.
So he has to handle the situation rather delicately,
rather skillfully, and so when the watchman comes and says who are you,
Beowulf immediately tells his lineage, who he is, why he is there, he is there to help,
his Lord, and the watchman recognizes in him a fellow warrior another man of
greatness, and honor, and nobility
and consequently he's far more willing to take Beowulf up to his Lord
in Heorot to introduce them and
that's where we leave off this section and move into the next is that Beowulf travels
with
the watchmen up towards Heorot
to confront Grendel.