Beowulf: A Must Read for Every Red-Blooded Man
While I normally like to review books I read, the hubris involved in “reviewing” Beowulf would be so immense and detestable that I decided against attempting to do so I finished reading it. It’s been a classic for over a millennium, and for good reason. At this point, it can’t be reviewed, only passed on and recommended.
For that reason, I thought it would be best to write about why you should read it.
Before that, however, a bit of background is necessary. We don’t quite know when Beowulf was written, but, given some of the historical or semi-historical characters in it, it was probably composed in its current form around the 9th century but was created in a different iteration, passed along via oral storytelling, centuries before. It’s the tale of a hero, Beowulf, who slays the monster Grendel and its mother before becoming a wise ruler that, in his later years, sacrifices himself to defeat a dragon that threatens his kingdom. It’s a story of bravery, heroism, glory, and wise leadership.
And, to put it simply, that’s why you should read Beowulf. It’s values are values that we have lost, being a nation of weak men, but must recover.
Heroism and glory, the two concepts at the root of Beowulf, are sorely lacking in our modern, industrialized world. If you read about the lives of the noble Greeks, read about the Roman Republic, hear the stories of the Vikings, Alfred the Great, Napoleon, Florian Geyer, and even the Founding Fathers, it’s easy to say that past times were far different than ours. For all of those men, bravery and the earning of glory were demanded by society and, when men were exceptionally brave or successful on the field of battle, they were rewarded for it.
Sure, that love of martial champions still somewhat exists, but with our military being focused more on flight suits for pregnant women than celebrating the feeling of plunging cold steel into an enemy’s breast, it’s hard to imagine that the US Army is the same sort of organization that brought eternal glory to such greats as Leonidas, Alexander, Alcibiades, and Scipio Africanus. They were encouraged to be merciless and wage war in a way that brought glory on their society and themselves. Soldiers today are often punished for accidentally shooting a civilian or for using a bit of enhanced interrogation to get what they need from a terrorist. To be blunt, we need warriors like Beowulf or Pompey, not wimps like the diversity chief for SOCOM.
Men in our society don’t have the same opportunities to earn what they have with blood and iron rather than gold. Consumerism, meekness, and conformity are the defining facets of our society, not the desire for glory and celebration of bravery that define the culture in Beowulf.
That needs to change, and reading stories like Beowulf is, I think, the best way to do it. As long as we celebrate working your way up from a minimum wage McDonald’s employee to manager of a local McDonald’s franchise more than we celebrate the modern versions of Alcibiades, Beowulf, and Julius Caesar- men like Erik Prince, Chris Kyle, and de Gaulle or Putin (loosely but respectively), our society will retain the dark malaise that has settled upon it.
The allure of adventure, the sweet song of clashing swords or thundering artillery, that is what drives real men and has always driven real men. Read Beowulf. Read The Bronze Age Mindset. Men don’t want to be like the manager of your local Walmart. They want to be Beowulf, Perseus, Theseus, or Charlemagne. They want to conquer, mercilessly crushing their enemies and showering rewards upon those loyal to them.
That is the mindset that has been lost as society has grown far more regimented and feminized. Boys are told not to fight. Women are told to be cogs in the corporate machine rather than homemakers that raise and educate honorable children. Men are told to sit in a cubicle all day, toiling away on some ultimately useful task, rather than living and building outside or in their study, letting the fresh air of freedom fill their lungs.
Do you think Beowulf or Hrothgar (another character in the story) cared about figuring out how to shave a penny off the price of a can of beans produced in Guadalajara and shipped to Omaha, or whatever their contemporary equivalent would have been? Nope, they didn’t sit in a BCG cubicle; they fought and conquered.
Was Alcibiades likely to sit idly by as his boss demeaned and nagged him? Nope. In fact, when his native Athens tried to do so, he switched to the side of the Spartans and changed the outcome of the Peloponnesian War.
Were Theseus, Perseus, Aeneas, or Beowulf worried about “offending” those around them? No. They did what they knew would bring them glory and cared not a whit about those that were lacking in their courage, other than perhaps seeking to protect them (as in Beowulf slaying the dragon). But, other than fulfilling their duty to protect their people, they did what was in their interest, the perception of those beneath them be damned. Just look at how Beowulf deals with a detractor, Unferth, in the story. As Tywin Lannister says in Game of Thrones, “the lion does not concern himself with the opinions of sheep!”
That is what you will gain from reading Beowulf, that attitude, an attitude that the modern American male is sorely lacking. I know I included lots of Greek mythology and history in this post in addition to the examples from Beowulf, but that is just to hammer the point home and mix up the examples. You’ll get the attitude from Beowulf alone.
The point is not to be cruel or a tyrant. Beowulf isn’t. But he is brave. He is glory-seeking. He fights and brawls, being proud with his martial exploits and many victories rather than being ashamed at having killed. He’s not a tyrant, but is a strong king that leads his people to victory.
Americans, especially young American men, need to recover that spirit. Exercise and learn how to fight with your hands and with arms. Be dangerous. Don’t let anything get in your way. Be a history maker that, like Andrew Breitbart would say, walks toward the fire. That’s how you end up in the stories told long after you’re gone, just as we’re still talking about Beowulf, Octavian, and Alcibiades today.
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The problem with appeals to martial exploits is that 99% of the time you get snookered into getting bloodied for the sake of some would be tyrant.
I’ve long said and shared to anyone who will listen and especially to women, that men, real men, were wired and built by their creator to be warriors. We were made to save the damsel in distress. To run into the burning building to rescue the child. To slay the dragon and crush the foe. We are stronger than women. We can more easily separate our emotions from whatever task is required of us, regardless of the danger involved, to protect our women, our children, and our country. Women I believe, as designed by their creator, desire deep within them to be protected by a strong man. A real man. They in turn provide us and our children love and nurturing. Providing the inborn gentle side of human nature to complement the warrior side that we men provide. How sad, dare I say dangerous that our society has masculinized women and emasculated men. Become a Beowulf. A Teddy Roosevelt. A Leonidas. That is how it should be……
….
Distressed damsel saving has been an expensive proposition, my experience.
Net negative, even a blind accountant would sum, not hollywood happy endings (tho some massage parlor type happy endings before the not hollywood endings did transpire).
Distressed damsels don’t undistress (usually), easier to just undress.
The distress of being a distressed property turnarounder is hard to toss off the back of the conestoga, too.
Troubadors inside heads been singing those synapses ‘til they singe, forever – & the troubairitzs know it. So both know each other biblically. Cycle on reggae wo/man.
As for TR, see if Gore Vidal’s knowledge of the man aims true. Here’s the pith, context is worthy game for you to hunt down & shoot (in United States Essays 1952-1992):
“Give a sissy a gun & he will kill everything in sight.”
I’m not sure about Roosevelt, but I’ll trust Gore Vidal to know a sissy.
I would, too. How do you think he compared to Buckley when they squared off in that interview?
Some “sissy’s” are a lot tougher, manly, have more integrity, than others.
Sure, obese desk jockeys who “earn” their living with mouse-clicks are going to suddenly grow balls. Go build something useful, you fucking pussies.
Jordan Peterson, “You’ve got to be a monster.” He means, of course, a good monster.
Mano a mano, good witch bad witch, Frankenstein & his projected creation. Conjoined twins Yin & Yang…have always been at war with Eastasia Yong. The Trinity ain’t just a cool fighter chick dipped in a shiny sheath the better to battle the matrix. All the world’s a stage & the acts are three by three card montes. Knew a guy, long ago, usta’ say, “let it be easy.” Avarice finds that advice hard to take – but easy to monsterize.
Enter Grendel, the monster, via John Gardner. Cuz history is written by the victors. But not just history. Lots of fiction, too…if that’s not too redundant (tho it really is).
I won’t say always. But pretty close. All my heroes have always been antiheroes, uncowedboys (& girls). Cuz there’s more truth in what the heroes pet scribes & pr apologists leave out than what they put in – which may contain just enough vaporous pheromone to aphrodisiac-whack the unwary, or even no truth at all. Power attracts the already corrupt, & “hero” is part of that power structure.
“O the ultimate evil in the temporal world is deeper than any specific evil, such as hatred or suffering, or death! The ultimate evil is that Time is perpetual perishing, & being actual involves elimination. The nature of evil may be epitomized, therefore, into two simple but horrible & holy propositions: ‘Things fade’ & ‘Alternatives exclude.’ Such is His mystery: that beauty requires contrast, & that discord is fundamental to the creation of new intensities of feeling. Ultimate wisdom, I have come to perceive, lies in the perception that the solemnity & grandeur of the universe rise through the slow process of unification in which the diversities of existence are utilized, & nothing, nothing, is lost.”
Grendel didn’t say this. He elicited it in conversation with Ork, the blind priest.
From the book flap:
“The first & most terrifying monster in English literature tells his own side (the true side) of the Beowulf story in this revisionist novel by the author of The Wreckage of Agathon – a book William Gass has called “one of the finest of our contemporary fictions.”
Grendel is comic, grotesque, at times very sad. It is filled with curious, & curiously engaging, characters, among them a wise & formidable dragon, an old King named Hrothgar – the royal bully whose marauding is ended & whose mind is crushed to wisdom & religion by Grendel’s revenge – & the weird stranger, Beowulf, defender of mankind, half dragon, half computer, with empty eyes.
The novel explores, one after another, the chief values of human beings, compares these with monsters’ values, & demonstrates that monsters are better. People who read for information will be pleased to find here accurate pictures of early Scandinavian home life & military practices, authentic data on dragons’ caves & lakes of fire, etc. People who read for feeling will be shaken. To the heroes of Beowulf, Grendel, devourer of men, embodies the chaos, death, & pagan darkness that have always haunted the edges of human consciousness. But the truth, as Grendel tells it, is darker: he haunts the warrior feast halls because he is in love with an ideal vision of man & God, a vision again & again betrayed as his human idols prove false & unworthy. His cri de coeur is a rich & allusive literary invention whose very horrors bind us in compassion to the self-described “pointless, ridiculous monster, crouched in the shadows, stinking of dead men, murdered children, martyred cows.”
Some goodreaders weigh in:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/676737.Grendel
So maybe read ‘em both.
I never lost mine. I don’t need to recover jack shit. Semper Fi. :>)
AMEN! Men without chests, indeed!
We are really doing a disservice to humanity when we remove classics from education. If you must send your kids to school then find a classical school. Most will read Beowulf, the Iliad, and so many others that speak to our primitive souls. I think so many can benefit from a classical education, but especially boys. If you can’t find a school for them that teaches how to live and how to die, then read these stories to your boys at night. They desperately NEED to hear them.
I can’t say what translation is best but don’t get the Seamus Heaney version. I have to admit, I hear the poem totally different in my own head, but I liked Jonathan Bowden’s short version.
Did anyone else think that except for 2 paragraphs, it didn’t sound like GenZ? Hell, he didn’t even tell us orange man good.
“Men don’t want to be like the manager of your local Walmart. They want to be Beowulf, Perseus, Theseus, or Charlemagne. They want to conquer, mercilessly crushing their enemies and showering rewards upon those loyal to them.”
Bullshit, most ‘men’ are males wholly ruled by their desire for comfort and conformity and sneaking plays at power (and ruled by their women). We’ve lived with the slave morality for too long.
Most live lives of quiet Mitty-porn addiction?
The males of which you describe are not men. Men are ruled by pussy and pride, and the sneaking suspicion that Beowolf was a rank amature.
Ruled indeed. Key word. To the lock. But as Eagles, among many others have noted, “We are all just prisoners here, of our own device.” Beowulf is one of those thousand faces telling the same old story. You can check out, but you can never leave, until you check out.
Think I’ll read it, thanks mark.