Beowulf

             When reading Beowulf, one must carefully consider the time era with which it is associated with. Consider, if you will, a life that has been based upon numerous fictitious Gods and Goddesses. Your life was truly fated to be whatever the Gods wanted it to be, anything could be blamed on, "fate." The afterlife could have been possibly the hardest bit to swallow. Only soldiers dying in battle could gain admission to their form of salvation, named Valhalla, which was only a place to sit and wait for the coming of the end of everything. You die to get somewhere, and then when you get there you just have to sit and wait until the infamous battle comes that will eventually lead to the destruction of everything. It'd be hard for anyone to take that into their beliefs. For reasons like this, and others, the Anglo-Saxons were a prime people to receive Christianity. Christianity seemed to be a much more people friendly belief. The real turn of religion, came with the conversion of King Edwin. The missionaries knew that if they could turn the heart of a king to Christianity, his people would soon follow. That's just what it did too. Not everyone though was ready to sign right up. The conversion of a people would take longer than it did just the king. That is why we have pieces of Old-English literature that contain hints of both Christianity and pagan principles. Changing the hearts of the people would mean changing literatures stories also. In this way pieces like Beowulf might seem like a slow sale of Christianity to the pagan people, containing a little of both the beliefs.
             One of the issues debated, was most likely, the origin of the earths beginning. "The Almighty making the earth, shaping-These beautiful plains marked off by oceans." (Ch.1,7-8) It seems like a far stretch going from their pagan ways and Gods to say that just one God created all this. The pagan fo
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Beowulf. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 19:11, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/45941.html