Symbols In Beowulf

Beowulf faces many battles in his life that symbolize struggles that people today have to face and overcome. In Thomas C. Foster’s book, How to Read Literature like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines, he states, “ people expect them (symbols) to mean something. Not just any something, but one something in particular” (104). That means that we want symbols to mean in thing like in Beowulf the monster Grendel could symbolize something. Grendel could be the very first major battle the a person faces, like Beowulf did in the book. This battle could be when someone gets their very first job while they are still in school and they realize that they might have bitten of more than they could chew. Once Beowulf