help Hrothgar, comes this young warrior.

He's a Geat, Beowulf is, and Beowulf the Geat

comes across the sea, hearing of the disaster that's happening in Heorot,

comes across the sea in order to stop the attacks of Grendel

that are occurring at Heorot. And he doesn't come

just for the sake of saving Hrothgar, notice

he comes also for glory. He's a young man and he wants to distinguish himself

and so he comes to

help out Hrothgar, but at the same time

it's a question of generosity that Beowulf

risks his life in order to free

Heorot from this awful beast and he crosses the sea

from Geatland, which is in the north down to Denmark,

more southerly, and this is the first of

several water crossings in the story. If you notice throughout the story there are several times

where the hero crosses over water, or goes into water.

And the water crossing is something which

is a natural symbol. Natural symbolism

is one of two types of symbolism, natural and conventional,

and conventional is agreed upon by a society, arbitrary,

natural symbolism is where the image by its very nature has in it the things

that

convey ideas to us. And so water is a natural symbol, it symbolizes darkness, and

malleability, protean world

view, it symbolizes all that

metaphysical world and in this

water crossing there's an image of him traveling into another world,

crossing over a boundary into some other world. And Beowulf crosses over from Geattland

into Denmark in order to engage in this first major adventure

with Grendel. When he comes up to

the Daneland there's a watchman on the cliff

and this would have been necessary in time of war, a watchman looking out over

the water to see

if anybody was going to be invading so he can run quickly to tell his Lord

about who they were. And when he sees this ship

land on his shore with all these warriors, heavily armed warriors, getting off

the first thing that he thinks is we're being attacked and so he goes and he

confronts Beowulf

rather roughly, rather abruptly, saying who are you, and why have you come to these shores?

This is also a hostility that emerges out of this fear or

terror that Grendel has instilled into the court.

The Grendel's attacks are not just dangerous because they kill men

directly or because they make Heorot an empty place,

they're also dangerous because they spread a certain

mental disease or spiritual disease, a Grendel mentality,

which is the mentality of distrust, and fear, and hatred.

And the watchmen pose as something of a threat to Beowulf therefore,

because he is challenging him directly.

If Beowulf gets mad at him and attacks him then he turns all of the

Danes against him and his whole mission is lost.

If on the other hand, he gets attacked, then his missions is lost because he could be

killed.

So he has to handle the situation rather delicately,

rather skillfully, and so when the watchman comes and says who are you,

Beowulf immediately tells his lineage, who he is, why he is there, he is there to help,

his Lord, and the watchman recognizes in him a fellow warrior another man of

greatness, and honor, and nobility

and consequently he's far more willing to take Beowulf up to his Lord

in Heorot to introduce them and

that's where we leave off this section and move into the next is that Beowulf travels

with

the watchmen up towards Heorot

to confront Grendel.