I Have Questions for Beowulf

So, this past weekend I read the Old-English poem Beowulf for one of my English classes. In case you don't know, Beowulf is an Old-English, epic poem about the hero/warrior Beowulf who kills the monster Grendel (and his mother) and slays a dragon. I had read parts of the poem before in other classes, but I

sort of skipped over a lot of the supernatural details in the poem.

Like, for example, when Beowulf kills Grendel's mother, he battles her underwater and he spends like an entire day at the bottom of a lake, and no one thinks its weird. And, I guess because no one in the poem thought it was weird, I just sort of ignored it. Like, Beowulf is constantly doing things that are physically impossible. On premise, I don't really have a problem with this because I understand that it's a legend, and things are 'legendary' for a reason. Also, as an English major, I am constantly reading books in which people are doing impossible things, so, at some point, you kind of have to get over that. Like, I've accepted the fact the Jules Verne thinks it's possible to drill to the center of the earth and that H.G. Wells thinks that Martians will be landing any day now. That's just literature for you.

Anyway, today, I was reading short sections of the epic out loud to one of my friends and she was asking all these practical questions, like "how did Beowulf spend an entire day under water and not die?". And I was like "huh, that's a good question". When you think about the poem with what I call your 'English major brain', you come up with a lot of questions about the poem.

Like, the fact that Beowulf can breathe under water isn't even referenced in the poem; it just seems like a totally normal thing. Furthermore, it wasn't even a one time thing in Beowulf's life. There is a short section of the poem in which Beowulf recounts a time when he was having a swimming race with one of his friends. They were swimming in the ocean for days and days until a sea monster dragged Beowulf down into the depths of the sea and Beowulf had to kill like nine sea monsters. Aside from the obvious objections about sea monsters, I think it's important to note that surviving underwater in a lake and surviving underwater in an ocean are two very different things. In the ocean, the pressure of the weight of all that water alone would kill you. We even googled "how does Beowulf breath underwater" and the only answer we could find is that Beowulf has "superhuman abilities". I'm not exactly sure what that means, because it's kind of a vague term, but it's not an acceptable answer.

I mean, It's okay if Beowulf has magical powers or if he ate some gillyweed or something, but I feel like that should be referenced earlier in the poem! Like, he kills Grendel by pulling his arm off; that is completely ridiculous! I don't care how strong you are; you have to be a True Blood vampire or something to physically pull someone's arm off, especially since Grendel is supposed to be this huge, tough monster.  Of course, Beowulf is, apparently, super strong. Like, there's one line in the poem where the author is basically like "yeah, Beowulf always breaks swords because he's so strong that he swings them too hard and they shatter".

Even if we accept that he has superhuman abilities, that doesn't really resolve anything because, in the end of the epic, Beowulf is killed by a dragon. So, he may be supernatural, but he's not immortal or anything, and, clearly, his superhuman abilities are not such that they can withstand a dragon attack. So, I'm not sure what that means.

I mean, the only solution I can think of is that maybe, in ancient times, it was perfectly normal to be able to breath underwater. Maybe it was like being able to wiggle your ears or cross your eyes. I think the History Channel would say that that was evidence of Ancient Aliens. If there were aliens in Beowulf, that would pretty much make Beowulf the equivalent of Will Smith in Men in Black. That's a mash-up movie waiting to happen.

Just sayin'