Shrimp + Will + Beowulf = Study Time (copies Luna)
Sept 22, 2010 18:42:06 GMT -5
Post by shrimp on Sept 22, 2010 18:42:06 GMT -5
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"Alright, so this is for Shrimp's quiz on Beowulf tomorrow. I'll try to help, although Why he didn't get someone who likes to read like Galaxy to help him I have no idea... Oh, right. Galaxy can't study. Anyways, I'm starting right now. Soo, yeah. Enjoy?"All of the Definitions:
Scop - a sings poet; somebody who sings tells extremely long stories (ex: Beowulf) to drunk warriors in an attempt to entertain them
Thane - defenders of the king; in the book, not all of the thanes defend King Beowulf. When he's faced with a dragon, all of them flee except for one guy who stood up for Denmark's prinicples (Wiglaf). Stupid thanes...
Mead - fermented drink made from water, honey, malt and yeast; a.k.a. Beer.
Epic - stories of the history of the people, which is normally told by a scop; they define the culture, values, traditions, heroes and territories of the nation. The scop had better know all of this...Epics record: Heroes, religion, battles, territories, traditions, values, laws
Bretwalda - king. Why they don't use bretwalda in the actual translation is understandable...
Aethelbert - First King Sussex, EnglandCaesura- a pause in the middle of a sentence, making two half-lines.
Like this:
Takeba Suzumi CAAAEESSUURRA killed all of my friends.
Kenning - two or more words that name something by a metaphor. It sounds more far-fetched.ex:
whale-road - Ocean
Peace-Weaver - woman
Light of Battle - sword
Candle-of heaven - light
Friend-Slaughterer - Takeba
Tiger-Girl - Clarisse
Alliteration - the repition of initial sounds.ex:
Will will win.
Sally sells seashells by the seashore
Princess Peach patiently poured purple-pineapple punch
Epithet - descriptive namingex:
Spear-Danes
Bold Beowulf
Worried Will
Determined Hermione
Strong Timothy
Crazy Luyu
Culture - the total way of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to the next
Wassail - an early english toast to someone's health; party?
ex: Luk Brookstein returned from a wild wassail which involved drinking lots and lots of mead. Boy, was he hungover the next day.Will: Wait, why isn't Luk doing this? He's the journali-
Shrimp: Shh. He has a hangover, so you're doing this. NAO.
Will: What?Fine... add even more stress to me then... -mutters something about being reaped-
Fine... add even more stress to me then... -mutters something about being reaped-Beset - To surround and attack
ex: Most of Team 1378 was beset by Team Strike
Reavers - people who plunder/rob/steal
After eliminating most other tributes, Team Strike
Baleful - Deadly or pernicious/destructive in influence
The slightly baleful Career Tributes were not on the same alliance for the past three years. How strange.
Mayhem - Violence and Destruction
The bloodbath is full of chaos and mayhem, not to mention supply gathering.
Bane - Cause of great stress
The dragon was the bane of Beowulf's life
Takeba Suzumi would have been the bane of my existence had it been that I'd known that she killed my allies.
Will: Wait, she killed all THREE of my allies?
Shrimp: Maybe she did, maybe she didn't. You'll have to find that out all by yourself
Will: OH COME ON!
Shrimp: Just be quiet and help me study for Pete's sake.
Luna: But killing three allies makes Takeba the sexorz. D:
Takeba: I did not have any knowledge that the possible three persons I slayed were of the alliance of Will Atlas; but, while injecting that I had no desire in killing the three parties, I would like to ask what makes death quote-in-quote "sexorz"? That terminology is not in my vocabulary and is not connotative to be negative, by reading your tone and body language.
Luna: ...Why must you be so uptight? Perhaps if you didn't worry so much, you would actually be taller and more endowed.
Takeba: ...
Quailed - to recoil in dread or terror
Alkin didn't have enough time to Quail at my broadsword as it cut through his neck. Maybe I should use a different example...
Dashica quailed at the amount of blood that flowed from her wounds. But she killed her attacker when she was at 39 HP, so she's fine.
Keening - to lament, morn, wail in grief
Sundra was keening for hours after she got the news about Trace. Poor girl, I feel bad for her. But still - I wouldn't have wanted to die via Trace's hammer, so...
Ignominious - shame
Grendel ignominiously slunk into the wet marsh to die.
Team Hiccups ran away from the bloobath in a somewhat ignominious manner, but they killed Ocean and Ema, so it's okay... For now...
Steeds - horses
Mounts - horses
Gabled - supports a roof, can be designed to look fancy; there were some in the Capitol, but only in the homes designed to look really old.
Eaves - the overhang of a roof. Roofs with eaves aren't seen in District 8. We just have apartment after apartment after apartment...
Torque - A usually metal collor or neck chain worn by the ancient Gauls, Germans and Britons
Marauuders - people who roam around and steal, like Reavers?
Mere - an expanse of standing water
Grendel's mother's mere burned every night, making it very creepy-like. No seriously, it caught on fire.
Bulward - a solid wall-like structure raised for defense
Plaited - braided
Galaxy has had her hair plaited occasionally. It's weird.
Damascened - a material with a woven-like pattern
Paltry - inferior
Timothy probably thought that his small dagger was paltry to Hermione's super big trident.
Raucous - disorderly
The raucous class refused to learn stuff without talking non-stop.
Stalwart - strength of the body or mind
Victors need to be stalwart in order to survive the Arena.
Alacrity - prompntness in response
The other tributes came with alacrity. It surprised me when they were all there at once, fighting to escape the bloodbath.
Most of the Plot/Characters, etc.
Okay, so at the beginning of the book, the scop tells of the beginning of Denmark,and all of the kings who ruled, etc. They did this because Beowulf is an epic, and they like, have to tell the whole history. They continue to do this throughout the story, drifting off into side-tangents and what-not.
So, the reader finally reaches the actual plot of the story when it is revealed that a monster, Grendel is terrorizing Denmark, which is ruled by Hrothgar. Grendel enters Heorot Hall (a mead hall built by Hrothgar), and eats many of the men who got drunk and slept there. The kingdom is in mayhem, and Hrothgar doesn't know what to do.
And then, the hero, who hails from Geatland (Southern Sweden), comes to Heorot Hall wanting to get rid of Grendel. He announces his name to Hrothgar, and we realize that said hero's name is Beowulf, which is "coincidentally" the name of the book. Beowulf states all of his past accomplishments, like a resume of sorts.
But Unferth, one of Hrothgar's thames, is very jealous of Beowulf, and fabricates a wild story that attempts to discredit Beowulf. But Beowulf uses three awesome put downs, that summarize to be this:
"You're going to go to hell."
"If you're all that, why is there a giant monster eating your fellow thames? Why haven't you done anything about it?"
"You killed your own kin."
And so, Hrothgar allows Beowulf to attack Grendel. But Beowulf decides to attack Grendel without using weapons of any kind, because he wants to be fair. Well anyways, weapons made by man don't work on Grendel (will explain in three sentences). So when Grendel comes into Heorot Hall, all of the thames are pretending to be sleeping. After eating an unlucky man, he turns to Beowulf. He's about to eat our hero when Beowulf grabs his hand so tightly that Grendel wants to run away out of fear. The men start attacking Grendel with swords, but the metal doesn't pierce his skin - for Grendel (A decendant of Cain [Cain and Abel]) has a curse inflicted on him that prevents any man-made weapon to hurt him.
So Beowulf and Grendel battle, one-on-one, mano-y-mano, until Beowulf is victorious. He takes Grendel's shoulder and arm as proof,and the monster slinks into the marsh where he lives to die. All of the men are happy - they think the horror is over. Beowulf is presented with many many gifts, like a torque, horses, gold bracelet-thingys, etc.
So, they all get drunk. But then Grendel's mother appears. She has been keening for a few hours, and she wants revenge for her son's death. She kills one of Hrothgar's most trusted advisors. Beowulf isn't there because he was given separate quarters to sleep in.
-So anyways, I must go to dinner now.-
BUT anyways, Beowulf has almost no time to prepare for this battle. The mother lives at the bottom of the mere, which burns at night. Beowulf goes underwater, and battles sea monsters and the mother for almost nine whole hours
(the fact that he can breathe underwater for nine hours is only proven by the fact that he's apparently been underwater for long periods of time before).
Before the fight, Unferth started to admire Beowulf, for he proved that he really was awesome and stuff. So Unferth gives Beowulf a sword. But while fighting the mother, the sword is useless. Once again, the Grendel family cannot be pierced by man-made swords. But Beowulf, being the stereotypical hero who can improvise better than an actor on broadway, sees another sword in her lair. This sword was wielded by giants, and it kills the mother. Grendel's corpse is in the lair as well, so Beowulf chops off the head,and carries it to the surface. It takes four men to carry the head (whoo hoo!)
-Will finish after dinner-
Okay, it's after dinner now
Soo..... where was I? Oh! So Hrothgar is extremely grateful, and practically adopts Beowulf as his son (not actually adopts him, but treats him like a son). Beowulf goes home, to the ruler of Geatland, Hygelac. Beowulf tells the ruler about his time spent in the land of the "Spear-Danes", going off on a tangent about how a certain marriage will spark a war. Beowulf gives Hygelac his prizes, some of which were a bunch of horses and the torquet.
But Hygelac died after a war, and eventually, Beowulf becomes king. Joy. He rules for fifty years. It must have been really boring, because they don't dwell on what happened while he was reining. So he was probably a good king who didn't end up facing extreme turmoil until the plot continues:
So there is this dragon. And this dragon has been asleep for a long time - guarding the treasures of a long-forgotten race of beings. One day, some bad person finds the hoard open - the dragon had left for a bit and was in the process of terrifying people. So the robber swipes a cup. When the dragon comes back, he's furious, and rampages over the countryside looking for the robber. In fact, he burns down the throne-room of the Geats, of which Beowulf is king.
Beowulf hears about this, and since he's king he must fight the dragon. He has a feeling that he'll die in that battle, despite the uncountable fights that he has won. He goes to battle the dragon, and is having an extremely difficult time. Just like the Grendel family, the dragon is not being pierced by the sword. And all of the thames flee, except for one - Wiglaf stays to fight with Beowulf. They manage to kill the dragon, but Beowulf is fatally wounded. Before he dies, he is comforted by the fact that he was practically invincible while he was young and strong. He tells Wiglaf to bring back some of the riches from the dragon's lair. Beowulf feels that his country will be secure, based on the amount of gold that's in that hidden hoard. He then dies, and that's all that Shrimp's read up to....Until
-TODAY-
And then Beowulf tells Wiglaf to build a funeral pyre so they can burn his body. He then tells him to create a barrow in his honor. When all of the idiot thames come back, and Wiglaf blames them for Beowulf's death. The treasures are removed from the cavern - despite the curse on them which was negated because of some reason...- and the funeral is held. [/size]
I AM DONE. YAY.
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