Synthesis Question 2
The differences between the Greeks and Anglo-Saxons can be discerned through two pieces of literature. Beowulf, an epic poem written in Anglo-Saxon times, tells the story of a warrior facing what seems to be the impossible. The hero, Beowulf, was described as having awesome power, and there was no foe that he could not best. This portrayal of the hero reflects beliefs of Anglo-Saxon culture, as they held in high esteem those who had great strength and courage. On the other hand, Greek heroes were revered for their intelligence and wit. This is shown in the play Oedipus by Sophocles. In the play, Oedipus rises to power by solving the sphinx’s riddle, an act that saved a city. The Greek hero offers insight into Greek values, as they highly valued intelligence. They produced some of the most well-known philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists whose theorems still hold true today.
The Anglo-Saxon custom of burial is another cultural conflict between the Anglo-Saxons and the Greeks. The Anglo-Saxons would cremate their dead and bury them with all of their belongings. They believed that one would go into the afterlife with all of the belongings that they were buried with. An incomplete cremation, or a partial burial, would result in an afterlife with no peace, as part of your body would still be a part of the human world. In Beowulf, when they kill Grendel they take his arm and hang it up on the wall as a trophy, showing that they have control of Grendel in the human world as well as in the afterlife. Grendel’s mother fights to retrieve the arm so that her son can achieve lasting peace in the afterlife. The Greeks buried their dead and had an afterlife based on morals. Once you were dead, your soul would travel to an underworld. Those who had lived a life filled with moral wrongs were sent to Tartaros, a realm even farther below the underworld. However, those who lived moral lives would go to Elysium, a wondrous realm on the western end of the Earth. The two pieces of literature, Beowulf and Oedipus, show how the two cultures’ beliefs contradicted each other.
It was very perceptive of you to draw comparisons between Oedipus and Beowulf, both of whom are considered archetypal heroes of their times but for very different reasons. The cultural differences are indeed revealing, but I think it was overlooked in your analysis that the Anglo-Saxon values were drawn largely from Paganism. It is also interesting to note the differences between the burial rituals, and how the Anglo-Saxon principles are reflected in Beowulf, but it would have been interesting to see more discussion of how these contrasting customs indicated cultural differences.
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