Beowulf
The Songs of ...

Consider Grendel, Hrothgar, Beowulf, Grendel's Mother, Sword, Herot, Dragon, Wiglaf.

Choose one of these listed characters/objects from the Beowulf epic and write "The Song of..."

This song/poem should reflect that character's personality as revealed in the poem and imagined by you. It should also express or reflect that character's understanding of the meaning of life.

Select an appropriate statement from the Life-quotes sheet and use it as an epigram for your song. (The quote you choose could express the opposite of what your character believes.) If none of the quotes seem to fit, please use one of your own finding (perhaps from a song or something else you have heard or read recently).

The song should be written from the character's point of view. What is he/she/it doing, seeing, hearing, thinking, feeling right at this moment? What will she/he/it show us about her/his/its understanding of the meaning of life? Use particular concrete images to SHOW what his/her/its life is all about.

FOR EXAMPLE:

The Song of the Cave

What is life? A frenzy. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a fiction. And the greatest good is trivial; for all life is a dream and all dreams are dreams. Pedro Calderón de la Barca

And I am the dream-house - dark deep and secret mouth,
mist-hidden hole in God's big earth where He never goes -
haven for wretched brutes and botched things.
In me some vile old she-beast and her bloody spawn dream of meat -
long lost dragon-gold dreams the sun in me.

Terror and desire dance and burn down here
beneath your earth beneath your eyelids
cave of stone cave of flesh
where blind heroes come to carve a name from a dream -
these oldest stories bubbling up from my own
and only darkest sleep.