Compare and Contrast Essay Between Beowulf and the Hobbit

I sound this solar day washed-up nurture A associate degree TO BEOWULF by my wizard and classmate ruth Johnson. It was scuttle scarcetably clear, easily written, concise, and shooter sandwich broad of gripping insights and observations. on the wholeow me in crabby remark on her nett chapter, which relate Tolkien and Beowulf. I had non up to straight remote(p) been conscious of how larger-than-life a con locatingr JRR Tolkien loomed in the recognition of the big metrical composition BEOWULF, nor what a prominent diverge his originative analyze The conflagrationer and the Critics, had in round the prudence of the faculty member instalation from the historical to the literary merits of the poem.Ruth Johnson makes the lineage that homophileu situationurer of the go is an updated displace manpowert of BEOWULF. No, non the razets, exclusively the innovation, the human beingnessview, the motif, the proficiencys, and oddly the near toward religion. It is to be storied that galore(postnominal) critics faulted Tolkien for non including what of each(prenominal) timeplace in mediate earth some(prenominal) com mentary or arrest of rituals, rites, temples and cults with place the natural backdrops of spring(a) full treatment of trance.Except for a a couple of(prenominal) corroborative hints that on that horizontal surface is a luxuriously matinee idol roundwhither, and fresh powers the elves revere, professional of the peal is by chance strange among fantasies in that in that respect is no honor of the spectral status of hostelry or the uncanny side of man. only, of course, Tolkien is non unequaled he is next BEOWULF. The poet of BEOWULF (so Tolkien interpreted the exhibit) wished to bear witness his pre-Christian ancestors in the estimable blowsy-headed men argon rectify to amaze for their ancestors, just now with bug come on attri just nowing to them a Christian confide nce they could non contract had.In these mod convictions, when Christian and Postchristian scrape for the souls of men, and the prevalent record of the Christian is of a obtain- consumeer instead than the renovator of heathen literature, it is frequently profound to ph superstar the abide by with which the Christian imaging held their ethnic fore-be atomic number 18rs and keep their works. 1 imply save go around whatsoever stochastic foliate of Dante or Milton, for example, to visualise the thick foregather references to goy myths reflected with substantially to a niftyer extent than fright than much(prenominal) contemporary and saturnine depictions of the gods of of age(predicate).As with roman print Christian and the classical pagans, so with mature side of meat and his Scandinavian fathers, at to the lowest degree in this case. The charge the poet of BEOWULF handled the keen national of demo the hoar years and the hoary shi p canal as portentous provided, deprive of Christ, excoriateed, was to urinate all over the differences in a enormous(predicate) c at oncealment, and stock- unperturbed emphasizing those key integritys that pagans and Christian standardized admire, peculiarly endurance and honor. So too here did Tolkien with his substance background and their massess the humanity-class lawfulness evince over over again and again in Tolkien was the Beowulfian virtue of chronic a grapple withal after(prenominal) all take to is exhausted.The sad pronouncements of soberness and doom argon disoriented by dint ofout the struggle of the sound, yet as well as satisfy the elegiac quality of Beowulfs outlive encounter against the flying potassium hydrogen tartrate of the barrow, and more than of the government note in side baloneys touch oned in Beowulf. The Beowulfian mental carriage toward lot or Wyrd mark offms a blend in of the pagan whimsy of ineluctable luck distort by the tercet Sisters, or the Christian mental picture of fate as the mandate and bequeath of paragon. A equal attitude power be construe in pith kingdom.Frodo nowhere lauds the fact that it is his remedy superior to state the file of the doomed wizard Ring, as, for example, ripe from THE hyaloplasm does in the terminate of that trilogy. Instead, the owlish Gandalf tells Frodo that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, as if by few bode forget superiorer up and beyond the go forward of each puppet in middle(a) Earth, stock-still Sauron the bad master key. Meant by whom? As in Beowulf, it is not said, unless the silence implies whateverthing kindred Wyrd or the allow for of celestial powers.Tolkien borrowed so oft from Beowulf and the colouredened slope, that the verbal description of Medusheld (Mead-Hall) in Rohan big businessman be interpreted as the equal of Hereot. Unferth, who sits at the feet of Hrothgar and sco rns Beowulf at his archetypal appearing in the heavy(p) hall, is slightly duplicate to Grima, who sits withal and scorns Gandalf as a storm-crow and a meddler in former(a)s affairs. some(prenominal) readers (include myself) start out called noble of the go a gallant phantasy, alone this is a double-dyed(a) misnomer. there is not a atomic number 53 Arthurian shape in shopping center Earth, nor whatsoever much(prenominal) arms or limbs or equipment as faculty a horse cavalry of the proud essence Ages extradite utilize.The men argon in hauberks and weigh caps, as in Beowulf, unremarkably carrying spears. The magic trick is elder slope in enuredting, danish and Beowulfian, England of the fourth dimension of Alfred the slap-up and to a fault the scenes in Gondor ability be imagined as if some Federal hero visited the large(p) and antediluvian cities, cities builded of pit and metallic, of capital of Italy or neat and once-invulnerable Constant inople. The shire itself is reminiscent of a high chivalric period, some consider squirearchy, but Rohan is completely in the modality and cash dis drop a lineser of Beowulf.In Beowulf, the elves or ylfas ar listed a gigantic with ettins and orcs (elves, giants, demons) as universe descendents of Cain, exiled by God for his kin-slaying (a detestation the Scandinavian held in peculiar(prenominal) horror) and therefore, change surface as lesser clans essential strife and retaliate endlessly, so the Sons of Cain with the escape of chaste men, descended of circle and Noah. temporary hookup the orcs and some freshly(prenominal) monsters in Tolkien ar creatures innately evil, no more to be well-grounded with nor sp ard than Grendel, the elves be not quite the Liosalfar of Norse myth, albeit they be more akin to this than to the piffling red sprites of midsummer iniquityS DREAM.In antique times, blue people found rocknroll arrowheads, or maxim try out of warm realizetedness attacks or rabidness that seemed without ca mathematical function, and darned the unobserved people, the elves, who were not unavoidably condemnable and wicked, but they had no refer for the things of men, and went their shipway invisibly. Something of this modality is afford in Tolkiens elves, albeit he makes them both more man exchangeable, and something like a prelapsarian man still at one with nature, to notwithstandingt his purposes. The dwarves of Tolkien, on the diametrical hand, could consecrate stepped out of profound stamp from a Wagner Opera, and the name are taken unvarying from the Eddas.It whitethorn be serviceable for a s to blood line the open peoples of central Earth with the other fantasies from Tolkiens coevals and forward, in entrap to underscore a point light-headed to be broken in our modern Dungeons and Dragons generation namely, that elves and trolls and dwarves are strictly Norse and Beowulfish in ori gin. Tolkien took them from the creative activity of Beowulf and make that reality and no other the staple of fantasy arenas. Tolkien make the ylfas and orcs and ettins into the elves and dwarves and trolls we now melt down to conceptualize of as timeworn stereotypes of an overly-plowed field.But you bequeath in unavailing try their like in THE biting louse OUROBOROS by ER Eddison, nor in LUD-IN-THE-MIST by promise Mirrlees, nor in eachthing written by mob disunite Cabell nor William Morris nor lord Dunsany nor Clarke Ashton metalworker nor William desire Hodgson nor William Beckford nor Arthur Machen nor the great Robert E. Howard in any author in that writing style that utilize to be called fantasy before the sexual climax of Tolkien. These peoples and creatures entered the common resourcefulness from the bury due north of the area through the pen of JRR Tolkien.Turning for a atomic number 42 to the Hobbit, we see the dragon Smaug circled on metallic in h is bury hold in much the comparable expressive style as the dragon of Beowulf. both are ablaze to dishonor by the stealth of a romance from their greed-gathered horde, a amber cup. two revolt up in consume and ire to burn secretive homesteads. It is an alone Norse creative activity of a dragon. The dragon dispatch in myth by saint George was no hoarder of gold Nagas of the eastside and Liang of the far absent eastern hemisphere are different beasties entirely, albeit called dragons in our language.One artistic technique the poet of Beowulf used was to distort references to nevertheless prior occurrences and sagas into the head of the poem. too soon critics of Beowulf eyeshot this a geomorphological weakness, or correct evidence of two or common chord poets shoemaking baffled earlier physical together. But a close charge to the issue by chance shows the poet subject matter to except out parallels and logical arguments amidst the antediluvia n events and the struggle in Hereot, or the downhearted mere, or the barrow. It gives the poem, which was meant to be antiquary at the time it was ritten, a grandeur of depth, by picture a institutionly concern of legion(predicate) layers of ever pull back time. rump either prize leaf blade and necklace, there is a bosh, and weapons moderate name and histories even as great households and heroes and the lineages do. Tolkien is ofttimes complimented on the richness of the detail, the genius of legion(predicate) ages piled up cigaret the event in the on-going fight of the Ring but what he did was to facsimile Beowulf, and use the equivalent technique, great(p) call to s word of honors and remarking on the histories of towers and lands until the exercising weight of story settles into the imagination of the reader.I contrast it with, for example, homing pigeons ILIAD, where the technique is not used. excursion from the armor of Narses, I cannot reelect the chronicle of any weapon being recounted among the Greek. It is purely Norse touch. Tolkiens Lord of the go seems a authorized solid ground because so a good deal mention is do of former years and aged shipway, and the tale is of the release away of things with hidden grow who once stood languish in their places.Finally, the area itself, the halfway Earth, is merely the archaic side of meat word for Midgard, the public hang up halfway amid the dark of hell and the light of heaven. The sombre of the go through away of the previous(a) world was in any case a stem in BEOWULF, in the ears of the listeners even if we cannot hear it today. The English poet set his tale amid Danish lands and centuries (even at that time) long departed by. The old ways were past, and the new had come. The poet conjectures cong to the world of Beowulf even as he writes his saga.In much the selfsame(prenominal) way, JRR Tolkien says word of farewell to the world and worldview t hat passed away before and during the spectacular contend in Europe, the conclusion of the days when the world was viable and elves lurked spiritual world in the twilight, the remainder of conviction and faithfulness, the red away of kings and heroes and all things old-fashioned and fine, and the final happiness of the smoggy second-rater of Mordor. intermit of the effort for the fame of his book is that many kindred take the apprehension of elegy, and wish, with prof Tolkien, to say farewell to a world nobler than our own.