贝奥武夫的读书笔记

Reading Report

Title: Beowulf’s Fight with the Fire-Breathing Dragon

Author: Chaucer

Genre: epic

Brief introduction:

Beowulf is a great hero who has defeated many monsters when he was young and strong. The challenge comes again! When Beowulf is 51years old, the monster fire-breathing Dragon come and hurt many people. Though he is a king, Beowulf takes his responsibility again and goes to fight against the fire-breathing dragon. They really have a violent fight. The fire-breathing dragon was killed by Beowulf, but Beowulf is also hurt by the fire-breathing dragon and the great hero died from the terrible hurt in the fighting. All the people of his kingdom lament his death.

Detail analysis:

At the beginning of the fight, Beowulf is brave and full of courage. He uttered boast: “I’ve never known fear; as a youth I fought/ In endless battles. I am old, now,/ But I will fight again, seek fame still, / If the dragon hiding in his tower dares/ to face me.” As a hero, Beowulf is really brave, though he is old and not as strong as before, he never escapes from the battle. This is what we should learn from him,

no matter how old he is, he always takes his responsibility and never say shirk.

With the fighting become more and more violent, it seems like that the possibility that Beowulf can win the fighting is slim. Beowulf’s followers begin to feel afraid of the dragon. The author wrote: “Quickly, the dragon came at him, encouraged/ As Beowulf fell back; its breath flared,/ And he suffered, wrapped around in swirling / Flame—a king, before, but now/ a beaten warrior. None of his comrades/ Came to him, helped him, his brave and noble/ Followers; they ran for their lives, fled/ Deep in a wood, And only one of them/ Remained, stood there, miserable, remembering,/ As good man must, what kinship should mean./” when I read here, I felt very angry, I hated Beowulf’s so called “friends”, they ran an the very first time when they sense danger and leave Beowulf himself fight against the fire-breathing dragon. In fact, we may meet the same situation in reality, when we need the help of our friend most, we can not find them, and then we may feel very sad or even worse. We may give up under in this occasion. I think Beowulf is also very sad when he see his friend ran from the battle, but no matter whether other people betrayed him or not, he still fight in his battle, not escape, not walk backward.