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We speak student!

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Beowulf a la Shmoop

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Gnomes

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Words of wisdom, Deb, long question for you.

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As if Grendel weren't bad enough,

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his mother makes her way to town

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the night after his death, no less.

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And, as you might imagine, she wants revenge.

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Revenge a big theme in this era.

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So, luckily, Beowulf comes to the rescue again

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and tracks her down beneath her leg,

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ending her life and taking Grendel's head as a trophy.

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When he returns victorious,

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Hrothgar has more than just material gifts to give him.

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Although he does have plenty of those, as well.

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So, tell us about the wise gifts of Hrothgar.

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Gift-giving and revenge and the whole notion of

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paying for your sins financially

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seems to be a meaningful theme here.

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So run us through that whole structure.

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Economy, I guess.

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Right. We'll talk a lot about - in an upcoming lesson -

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about the material gifts, right?

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So, right now we're gonna talk about

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the gifts of wisdom that Hrothgar gives Beowulf.

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And these have a name to them.

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We call them "gnomes,"

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- like little garden gnomes. - Yeah, those little...

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Yeah, but not.

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And they're basically like little pithy

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phrases of wisdom.

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So these are pieces of wisdom that are given

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from one character to another.

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But we're also supposed to take them to heart

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as readers.

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So it kind of has a double meaning.

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An example of a gnome from today

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would be something like, "don't bite the hand that feeds you."

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These are just like little things that people say to each other.

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And it means something when Hrothgar says it

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to Beowulf and it also means something when

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we, as readers, look at it.

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So, Hrothgar tells Beowulf

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not to boastfully give gifts.

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If you're gonna give gifts, it shouldn't be boastfully.

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He tells him not to be arrogant.

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And he also warns him about the fleetingness of life.

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He says, "But a little-while lasts thy life-vigor's fulness.

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'Twill after hap early,

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that illness or sword-edge shall part thee from strength."

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So, it's basically saying, like,

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"Yeah, you're great and all now, but life's short."

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When we hear these words of wisdom,

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again, we can't just take them at face value and move on.

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We have to think about what they represent

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about the culture's values at the time.

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"Don't bite the hand that feeds you"

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is something we say today.

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That is something that represents

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a cultural belief that we have,

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that you should respect, kind of, the people who are

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giving you what you have.

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These gnomes are a pretty good way of figuring out

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what was important to a society.

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After Grendel's mom comes

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and kills a bunch of people,

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Hrothgar is like all "woe is me."

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He's really sad, and one of his

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you know, closest associates has been killed

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and he's mourning.

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And Beowulf comes up to him and is like,

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"Dude, suck it up.

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We need to get revenge.

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Stop mourning, stop wallowing.

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We're gonna get revenge."

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And he does it through a little gnome.

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And it shows us that that's what important in this society,

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is revenge.

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And that's not a bad thing.

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That's just how they worked back then.

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So when we hear these gnomes,

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we can say, "Oh, okay.

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Check. Revenge was important back then. Not mourning."

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So what was -- Revenge is almost a moral compass, then.

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It's a balancing act that, you know,

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for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.

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So you kill my cousin, I'm gonna kill yours.

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Or you, or whatever, right?

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Exactly, and that's where that death price comes into play.

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Because, either "you kill my cousin, I kill yours,"

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or "you kill my cousin,

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and now you pay me a ton of money." Exactly.

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Exactly. So, but it is, it's a really -- It's a balancing act.

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And it -- Life is worth some finite amount, right?

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Again, if we can -- Someone gets killed and then

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you pay some amount of money

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or gifts to make up for it.

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Life has a specific value

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and the only way to get, you know,

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precise equal value is by taking another life.

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Got it. And, I mean, it applies in today's legal courtrooms.

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You know, when people are guilty of a product liability

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and the air bag didn't deploy, you know,

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GM does a discounted cash flow analysis

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of what the person's profits would have been

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the remaining part of their life,

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does some adjustments to it, and says,

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"Well, this life was worth 842,000 dollars."

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Exactly. And to us, that seems kind of, like,

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vulgar, right? A lot of people are like,

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"How can you say this person's life was worth,

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you know, 800,000 dollars?"

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But, back then, that's just what it was.

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It was not vulgar; it was not looked down upon.

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That just was how culture worked.

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What is a gnome

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and why would Hrothgar want to give gnomes to Beowulf?

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What are some gnomes from our own culture?

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What can we tell about the culture of the time from gnomes in Beowulf?

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Are there similarities we can draw between our culture and Beowulf's?

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How was revenge viewed

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and dealt with in Beowulf's time?

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What about now?

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To us that seems, kind of, like, vulgar.

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