Jealousy In Beowulf

This year in English class we have studied world mythology, The Odyssey, medieval literature, Beowulf, Midsummer's Night Dream, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Although we did not get to 2 other units, the books that we read were interesting and provoked questions about the difference between good and evil, about human nature, and other queries that sparked debates. With our Odyssey unit, we talked about Odysseus’s massacre of the suitors. We asked ourselves, ‘Was this justified? What determines whether or not murder is justifiable? Did Odysseus have a choice? What would WE have done?’ And none of the class could come up with an answer that another classmate did not agree with. When we learned about Beowulf, we debated whether Grendel's mother had a right to seek revenge for her son’s death, and what made her plot for revenge more wicked than
We asked ourselves about the role of women in old literature, and this became a common topic in every story we studied. We debated many times whether Helena was a fool for being in love with Demetrius when we studied A Midsummer's Night Dream, and we asked ourselves what we would have done if we had to make the choice Hermia did. To me, these thought provoking debates and discussions were my favorite part of English Class this year, and I enjoyed every time we partook in these discourses. My least favorite part of English class this year was reading the books in class. For me, it would have been much easier to read the book home alone than in class, where people rapidly lost interest and caused distractions and we had to listen to people talk for the whole