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Beowulf a la Shmoop

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Material Goods

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If you haven't noticed yet, there's a lot of things -

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material wealth and stuff - in Beowulf.

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Beowulf recovers items from Grendel's mother's lair.

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Hrothgar rewards him handsomely multiple times.

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And now we have a big trove of treasure

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guarded by - what else? - a dragon.

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So, question - talk to us

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about the importance of material goods in Beowulf.

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What are they? How do they function?

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And how do they get discovered?

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Are their mines that they're digging in?

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And, you know, how does all that work?

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Material stuff has been cropping up, you know,

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throughout this whole story.

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We see goblets all over the mead hall.

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You know, this is the equivalent of, you know,

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having -- what do you call it when you have the gold...?

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- Grill. - The grill! There we go.

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Yeah, Ryan Lochte.

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The equivalent of having a grill is having goblets

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all over your mead hall.

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The men have these, you know,

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tons of armor all blinged out.

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The women are wearing tons of jewelry.

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When Beowulf kills Grendel,

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Hrothgar, you know, in addition to these gnomes

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that we talked about, gives him

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so many things. He gives him horses.

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He gives him a kingly saddle.

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He gives him a sword and a shield

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and all this stuff.

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So, clearly, it's important.

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And again, it reflects the cultural values of the time.

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We look at this and we're like,

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"Oh, they were greedy. Theme of greed in Beowulf."

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But, like, it's not.

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That's just how things worked back then.

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Having these material goods

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were a sign of your success and your wealth.

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Now, if you walked into someone's house

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and they had goblets everywhere,

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you might -- Or like in this case, you know,

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dollar bills, like, making it rain.

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You might think, "Oh, you know. They're greedy."

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But that's not what we're supposed to think.

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We're supposed to think, "Oh, they're successful."

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It's a good thing. It's respected.

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Why do you think that's the case?

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You know, when I think about this era,

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I think about resources.

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Just living, having food reliably,

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and water reliably available,

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and protection from the elements and disease

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and God knows what else,

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it was like an achievement.

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Like blowing out your birthday candles

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was something that came

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because life was so hard. And that was only

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a couple of hundred years ago that tradition started.

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That you still had breath strong enough

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to blow out your candles so you celebrated another year

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of life.

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In this era, my goodness,

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it must have been very hard.

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So I get the materiality mattering.

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And it wasn't dollar bills,

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it was like goblets for water.

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Right. And the materiality matters

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and you have to remember that, again,

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we're not talking about everyday people,

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we're talking about kings here, right?

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So things like a goblet or a sword

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or, you know, jewels,

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were a way for a king to, say,

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make an alliance. Instead of just kind of like

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shaking someone's hand and saying like,

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"Yes. We're good. Gentleman's agreement."

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Like, we don't do that today either.

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We sign contracts.

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And, you know, the way that they did it to have alliances

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was to give gifts among each other.

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Give material things instead of just saying, like,

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"Yeah, we're good."

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And it was important to kind of have that,

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as you brought up earlier,

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that symbol of a connection.

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But, in Beowulf, there's a tension.

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Because, you know, again, reflecting cultural values,

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material things being good and respected.

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But, when the story was written down,

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the Christian values had really come into play.

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And, as we know from the Bible,

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you're not supposed to value worldly things.

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You're supposed to, you know, value the other-worldly,

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not the worldly.

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And so we do see this tension.

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Some of the gnomes that Hrothgar says to Beowulf

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are about, you know, "value eternal life."

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Kind of, "you can't take it with you" idea.

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So we do see the tension,

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and if you're, you know, if you're confused

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while you're reading Beowulf, you're supposed to be.

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Because there is a tension between pagan and Christian values.

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Valuing what's worldly and what's material

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versus completely pushing all that aside

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to value the other-worldly.

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What are some of the material goods talked about in Beowulf?

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What's the purpose of the display of wealth and all the glitzy gifts?

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Why is there a tension between materiality and immateriality in Beowulf?

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How is this tension shown in reading the story?

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Yes, we're good.

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