(Insert Hero Here) vs. (Insert Hero's Arch Enemy Here)

As seen by Beowulf, there are different qualities of a hero and qualities of a villain. I see this as a character or literary hero because of the context in the poem. It always seems as though a hero has the means to stop the villain and the villain always has the hero's weakness on hand. This situation is not in Beowulf until it seems like Beowulf's weakness is his age when he fights the dragon. Beowulf shows that a hero is chivalrous, respectable, modest, and always does what is right. In Beowulf, he demonstrates that he wants to do the right thing by fighting Grendel with his bare hands. This actually helped Beowulf because no weapons could hurt Grendel and this made Beowulf able to defeat him. Through Beowulf's honest actions that he as a hero posses, he was able to do what his overall goal was to do, kill Grendel. On the other hand, a villain holds the opposite qualities of a hero. A villain appears to be evil, dishonest, harmful, and always doing something wrong in the eyes of the public. The villains of Grendel, Grendel's Mother, and the Dragon are all seen as the villains in this poem and hold the quality of harming others. When it comes up between the two, the hero will win because that's what the reader would like to read. But also brought up in class, the hero and the villain are in the eyes of the beholder. The qualtities of either side can be flip-flopped between each other by the reader or a spectator. That's why the qualities of heroes and villains can be so difficult to see.