our swimming match, his might was the greater; morning found him cast by the sea on the coast of the Battle-Reams" (p. 67). Beowulf was arrogant, unthinking and brash in his youth to embark in life-threatening bets, and to lose the fight only weakened his reputation, leaving his people to believe in him as weak and incapable. Not only was Beowulf undistinguished to his people, but he was unknown to himself. Hrothgar housed Beowulf's father for many years when his life was in danger and he could not return home; thus, Beowulf was left with no reputation to uphold, no footsteps to follow, no fatherly wisdom and no man to look up to. He was to begin a new life of mysterious identity that he must shape and develop. Beowulf embarked on his journey with the call to fight the monster, Grendel, with no identity as a warrior or man; however, as Joseph Campbell say, "the adventure evokes a quality of character that he, the hero, hadn't known he possessed."
             The second phase of the hero's adventure involves the series of progressively more difficult trials. His initial departure begins as an identity quest--a quest to pay back to Hrothgar the deed he had done in saving his father. Upon entering the kingdom of Heorot and accepting the challenge to fight Grendel, he must move out of the familiar and conventional safety of his life to undertake this challenge--a significant step in the shaping of a hero. His first trial comes just prior to his defeat of the ferocious monster, in the form of the Unferth. Unferth, the arrogant, unthinking and brash warrior, challenges Beowulf with his tantalizing story of Beowulf's loss in the fight with Brecca and announces, "I see little hope then of a happier outcome . . . if you propose awaiting Grendel all night, on his own ground, unarmed." (
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