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Thursday, March 14, 2013

Decapitation in Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Decapitation in Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
One theme that features plain in both Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is that of decapitation. The symbolic substance of this act, however, plainly differs between the two poems. As close readings of pertinent passages from each reveal, in Beowulf decapitation symbolizes a glorification of victory, spell in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight it symbolizes an unnecessary and pointless excessiveness of violence.
Decapitation in Beowulf
In Beowulf, decapitation serves as a symbol of glory and pride in victory. Decapitation produces a physical token that serves as a clear reminder of a victory, essentially a trophy. Beowulfs defeat of Grendel is and then somewhat incomplete since he does not behead the monster. Grendels come takes revenge by killing Aesc present, the favored consultant of King Hrothgar, and leaving his head to be found distant of her lair:
To all the Danes,
the men of the Scyldings, many a thane
It was a sore pain at heart to suffer,
A melancholy to every earl, when on the seacliff
They came upon the head of Aeschere.

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(1417-1421)
The language of these lines uses repetition and multiple terms for sorrow to explain the effect of Aescheres disunite head: sore pain at heart, suffer, and grief recoil the lasting impact of the trophy display of the head. This seems an understandable reaction, only when one must remember that the men are warriors and habituated to battle and death. They may grieve over his death, but here the generous sense of suffering arises more from the fact that Grendels mother is glorifying her revenge with the display.
Beowulf finally manages to kill Grendels mother by cutting off her head. Afterward he comes upon Grendels ashes and decapitates it as well:
He paid him blanket for that,
The fierce champion, for on a couch he saw
Grendel fiction lifeless,
Battle-weary from the wound he received
On the combat at Heorot. His corpse burst open
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