British Literature Assignment

This was my latest assignment in class. We were supposed to take part of the epic poem "Beowulf" and rewrite it. The assignment was left open in order to give us a lot of freedom and opportunity to exercise our creativity however we wanted to. This is an Old English epic about the evil monster Grendel who walked the earth in the night slaying the Danes as they slept in the mead hall. Beowulf rallied his men (from Geatland) and sailed across the sea in order to challenge Grendel and rid the friends of his father of the menace lying over their land. Here is the section that I chose to rewrite; although, I did draw on the rest of the epic for context and information, and the formatting of the blog is not conducive to reproducing the section of the epic:

"The Hero Comes To Heorot"

     "So that troubled time continued, woe that never stopped, steady affliction for Halfdane's son, too hard an ordeal.  There was panic after dark, people endured raids in the night, riven by the terror.

     "When he heard about Grendel, Hygelac's thane was on home ground, over in Geatland.  There was no one else like him alive.  In his day, he was the mightiest man on earth, highborn and powerful.  He ordered a boat that would ply the waves.  He announced his plan: to sail the swan's road and seek out that king, the famous prince who needed defenders.  Nobody tried to keep him from going, no elder denied him, dear as he was to them.  Instead, they inspected omens and spurred his ambition to go, whilst he moved about like the leader he was, enlisting men, the best he could find; with fourteen others the warrior boarded the boat as captain, a canny pilot along coast and currents."

And this is my telling of this part of the story.  I chose to write in first person, from the perspective of a Norse warrior of the time.

In Geatland, I was raised by a race of great men, warriors all.  Time passed, and I grew strong in the fight and skilled with the great axe, a weapon feared by all my foes.  We would go out and hunt, bringing back food for the women and children.  Long would be the feasts in the mead-hall, merry voices made sweet with wine would be raised in songs praising our prince, the noble Beowulf.  I had always listened to the tales of the bards, and many hours I spent in the company of grizzled veterans who had returned from many glorious campaigns.  Little did I think that the time would ever come that I, a simple warrior, would be given the great honor of fighting by the side of our prince in what would surely be a struggle of most epic proportions handed down through the songs of traveling harpers and whispered from mother to child around the fire at night.

Rumors had long been passing through our country.  Sailors would bring back stories.  Their eyes would be starting from their heads with fear.  We laughed at the pitiful cowards.  But the stories kept spreading, tales of a dark threat, a menace traveling over the far-off land of a friend to our king.  A nameless fear that carried off many strong men at a time and slaughtered them was decimating the population of the land.  At first, I paid no attention.  Rumor is after all just that, rumor, and scared people do not have the clearest minds in reporting their tales.  Then, one day that changed.  Suddenly those rumors became very important to me.

Appearing in our village, surrounded by his picked men, stood our prince delivering an impassioned speech to a marketplace crowded with my friends.  All the people I had known from my youth, we stood there.  A great hush was over us.  The only sound that fell on our listening was his voice.  Beowulf.  He was clad in full battle armor with a great two-handed broadsword slung across his back, telling us of one, Grendel, who was responsible for the terror of the sailors spreading rumors through our land.  His friends were being attacked and slain.  The number of mutilated corpses was climbing rapidly.  No one seemed to be able to put a stop to the havoc caused by this one monster. 

I looked around.  I saw my comrades standing there with fires kindled in their eyes.  I felt the excited spirit that flowed through the multitude.  And then, our great prince ended his speech with a question.  Not one of us looked away from him.  Our eyes were riveted on his face.  "Which of you will take up his sword and follow me?"  Silence filled the marketplace as he finished speaking.  Then, with one great warcry, the men of Geatland stepped forward as one.

And thus the men of Geatland boarded their great longships and set out across the sea.  We followed Beowulf, our hero.  We did not stop to think that perhaps few of us would return.  None of us reckoned what might be the possible cost.  None of us knew exactly what lay ahead.  We knew only one thing.  We would follow our prince to the gates of hell itself if he would but lead the way.

And now I see so many ways I could improve this.  As it is written here, this is the draft I turned in for the assignment.  LOL.  *sighs*  I suppose that will come later...