Beowulf, The Epic Poem - Comprehensive And Detailed Summary

This content contains a full and comprehensive summary of the historical poem, Beowulf.

The Spear-Danes two precious Kings are so extremely fiery in battles and well straight when dealing with their subjects in the mead-hall that is meant for all kinds of feast and merriments.

Between these two king is Shield Sheafson who appears to be the first one between the two. Shield is succeeded by his son, Beow who also made a great impact while ruling over his people. Beow reigns and his death helps him in handing over to his son Halfdane, a warlord who has three sons, Heorogar, Hrothgar, and Halga, and one daughter. Halfdane's daughter whose name is unknown.
Prince Hrothgar gets upper hand among his other brother and is bestowed with opportunity to serve the Danes's land as their new king after his father last breath. Hrothgar has support from a lot of people both the young and the aged that boost his chance of becoming the king. That is where his success starts from

King of the Danes in Denmark who ascends the throne after the great king Shield Sheafson, King Hrothgar is pleased over his success as a prominent ruler of the kingdom and therefore sets up a mead-hall where his subjects will be using for any feast. The hall will be a place where lords and other great people in the land will be hanging out. He called the gigantic mead-hall Heorot.
Inside the mead-hall, the king's warriors and servants always assemble to drink and eat together as well as receiving gifts from their masters. While entertainers such as storytellers, bards, and scops will also be available to render their hilarious services.

A demon that is dwelling nearby the heorot hall, in a place known as swamplands of Hrothgar’s kingdom often feels bad about the joyous noise as it considers the noise as offensive. The demon's name is Grendel. He rigidly hates seeing or hearing making merriment either by drinking or partying together like what is happening in the mead-hall everytime. The contents of the songs that are coming to his ears irritate him more as the contents are geared towards God's praise which demons dislike.

From time to time especially in every night, Grendel makes its way to the Heorot hall to cause calamity by attacking the King's warriors, kills them and sometimes takes them as its food. In the first night that Grendel appear to terrorise the Heorot, he kills and takes always thirty people. The king and his people look helpless when discover what has befell on them from the Grendel's hands.

He returns in the following night to repeat what he does previous night This horrible torment continues for many years more than twelve, while the kingdom is powerless over the demon. No one comes to the hall again as it has become centre of dismissal for anyone.

Everywhere both inside the kingdom and outside is filled with news about the King's helplessness. Storytellers and singers use the trends to boost their businesses by telling sad stories and singing about it.
No one dares to face Grendel let alone approaching him with negotiation of ransom maybe he can stop his disastrous acts against the land.

A lot of efforts are made by Hrothgar to stop the beast from attacking them. Some people lend him several pieces of advice that including opinion to use military strategies against it. Some say he should render sacrifice to pagan gods thinking that the gods can help them out of the problem. All efforts prove abortive and are wasted.

A king from a nearby country, Geats king,King Hygelac hears of the plight that is agonising the Spear-Danes and rises to rescue them. He therefore asks his warriors to get his boat ready for the journey. His warriors wish to stop him from leaving but dare not utter such word to him. They instead prepare some warriors to go on his behalf. The men and tell reason for their visitation once they set foots on the land. The Dane think the Geats is to for war but a warrior explains that he is a Geat, a follower of King Hygelac, and the son of a noble and famous warlord named Ecgtheow.

It is declared that the leader of the warriors is named Beowulf who is Ecgtheow's son who has got information about the Deans' agony and remembers a favour that Hrothgar has done for his father in the past and sails out to lend hand to safety of the Deans in Denmark.
On getting to the kingdom, Hrothgar warmly welcome Beowulf and accedes his offer to go in battle against Grendel and set the kingdom free from its tribulations. The king organises a banquet in the luminary's honour to welcome him to the land. During banquet, one of the Hrothgar's men, Unferth reveals his lack of contentment towards the honour given to the hero but later admit after when Beowulf relates with him his past achievements.

Subsequently, at night, Grendel shows up and Beowulf goes in battle against the demon. During the fight, the demon gets mortally wounded. His arm gets tore in the shoulder runs away because he cannot withstand the defeat. This later leads to his death in the wilderness.
Hrothgar and his people are extremely happy when seeing the victorious end of the battle. In order to expressive mind that understands favour, Beowulf receives gifts and treasures from the king as a mark of honour to him.

Unknown to them, the dead demon has a mother who has discovered her son's untimely death. The mother decide to take revenge against her son's murderers in wherever they are hiding. By the time the demon appears, the Danish and Beowulf are sleeping after a long time of celebration over the victory.

At that very night when they have been overjoyed and carried away, she killed many among the warriors that are in the hall including Aeschere, who happens to be Hrothgar’s most trusted adviser. She continues attacking them until when everyone wakes up. She immediately flees to hide in a cave underneath a nearby lake when detects that the people have waken up.

Beowulf along with some warriors follows her to the cave in order to have her caught. The other warriors return to the city while Beowulf only enters into the cave to fight her. The Danish warriors create a mindset that Beowulf will not return alive but the legend's followers have a contrary mind believing in their master.

The legend and the demon start fighting against each other when they meet inside the cave. Suddenly, he sights a blade in the demon's stash of treasure, seizes it and uses it to cut her head off.

Danish warriors are amazed to see him appearing holding Grendel's mother's head. For the second time, they rejoice and give more gifts and treasures to their saviour.

Hrothgar feels bad over Beowulf's departure. In fact, it is sorrowful goodbye for the king but there is no remedy nor means to retain him. He has to return with his followers to their land Geatland where King Hygelac is ruling.

As they get back home, they meet king Hygelac and his queen, Hygd and relate how victorious their journey to Denmark is being.

Not quite long, Beowulf ascends the Geatland throne after when Hygelac, Hygd and their sons get killed in a war against Shylfings. He reigns for complete fifty years. During the fifty years, his people are protected as they are free from threaten of other countries that surround them.

Everything is going well with both the young and the old of the land.
To interrupt the peace that has been order of the day in that land, someone goes and steal a goblet that belongs to a dragon. This move angers the dragon to the extent that he goes ahead destroying every village by burning them into ashes. A lot of people are killed by the dragon but still not satisfy his anger.

Regarding his love to his kingdom, Beowulf takes seven men with himself and set off to wage war against the dragon. During the fiery battle between the beast and the king, the king gets seriously wounded but manages to dismiss the beast with assistance from Wiglaf who is one of his men. He is traumatised as the monster deeply bites him in his neck. Immediately after the dragon's last breath, the king also gives up the ghost as a result of venom of the bite.

The Geats after their King's departure bring up an gigantic funeral pyre to honour him. This is done after they have fulfilled his wish that his body should be burn before getting buried. Once the pyre has burned down, they spend ten days building an enormous barrow.

The people are so terrified fearing that their King's death will be opportune time for the enemies to make their wishes accomplished over them.

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Birago Diop's Vanity - Summary and Analysis with Full Text

This page consists of summary of the Vanity by Birago Doip, its detailed analysis and finally its full text so that you can be more familiar with the poem.

Vanity is a poem written by an African poet Birago Diop from Senegal, a France colonized country in Africa. He lived between 1906 and 1989. Diop as one of the venerable and praiseworthy mortals of Negritude literary movement in Senegal loved and made all possible efforts to nurture culture that belonged to traditional society of Africa. He felt extremely wretched to see African elites repudiating their ways of living so as to embrace and cleave together with foreign culture introduced by the Westerners.

Summary And Analysis

The poet persona starts the poem by asking pitiful and contemptible Africans to make known who will lend ears to them when have to tell all what they shall one day have to say even saying it gently, gently.

According to the poem, what may be interest of the Africans to tell is nature of the "torment" they may be encountered for welcoming sophisticated culture of the Westerners.

Whenever African becoming engraved as result of loss of valuable culture of theirs especially when begin to feel remorse for their stance towards the cries of their ancestors, inquiries are made rhetorically that what eyes, heart and ear will watching their large mouth, listen to their clamoring and ear their pitiful anger respectively without laughter.

The poem persona urge his fellow Africans to go back to their ways of living before it becomes too late for them. The beauty of their own culture is bright enough for Africans to embrace. The contemporary society of Africa should abstain from addressing traditional culture as barbaric, outdated or esoteric so as to avoid the punishment that may associate with such.

The poem persona made use of features of nature "air", "water" and "earth" to depict what is natural that remain intact; likewise, the abandoned culture is supposed to remain intact locking out modernization and so called civilization.

Themes of "Vanity"

Theme of Ancestors' Wisdoms Abandonment.

The poem makes it clear that Africans  have really abandoned the wisdom and knowledge that their forefathers employed to sustain their traditional culture. The generation of civilization depicts their ancestors' wisdom as barbaric and outdated and therefore neglect it completely in favour of modern heritage.

Theme of Pain and Distress.

Neglecting the wisdom which they supposed to embrace has to bring about pain and distress when it is time. At that time, they will cry in agony while no one will get ready to listen to them but mock them.

Clamoring heart, pitiful anger and large mouth are significantly products of sorrow for losing something valuable which is nothing else other than African value.

Literary Mechanise Used

Rhetorical Question: this is a question that requires demands no response from listeners despite that being asked in normal way. It is context of the question that turn it to rhetorical question. In the poem there are some rhetorical questions that meant for emphasis as a result of serious mindset of the poem persona. All the questions end with question mark. 

They are:

“Who then will hear our voices without laughter?”

“Who then will hear us without laughter?”
“What eyes will watch our large mouth?”
“What heart will listen to our clamouring?”

“What ear to our sobbing hearts?”.
- Synecdoche: this is a figure of speech that specialized in standing a part of something to represent whole of what the part belongs to. Head or hand can represent human being. In the poem therefore, "ears", "eyes", and "hearts" stand for human beings in the poem.

- Repetition: remember that this has to do with appearance of one or two lines more than a time in a poem. In Vanity, line eight " What eyes will watch our large mouths" is repeated in line ten. While line eleven " What hearts will listen to our clamoring?" is repeated in line twenty-nine.

- Simile: this is an indirect comparison of two things of conflicting or different attributes together using "like" or "as". For instance, the growing of pitiful anger is said to look like a tumor.

"What ear to our pitiful anger

"Which grows in us like a tumor".

When they have spoken to us in their clumsy voices;

Just as our ears were deaf."

"To their cries, to their wild appeals

Just as our ears were deaf."

FULL TEXT OF VANITY

Vanity

If we tell, gently, gently
All that we shall one day have to tell,
Who then will hear our voices without laughter,
Sad complaining voices of beggars
Who indeed will hear them without laughter?

If we cry roughly of our torments
Ever increasing from the start of things
What eyes will watch our large mouths
Shaped by the laughter of big children
What eyes will watch our large mouth

What hearts will listen to our clamoring?

What ear to our pitiful anger
Which grows in us like a tumor
In the black depth of our plaintive throats?

When our Dead comes with their Dead

When they have spoken to us in their clumsy voices;

Just as our ears were deaf
To their cries, to their wild appeals
Just as our ears were deaf
They have left on the earth their cries,
In the air, on the water,

where they have traced their signs for us blind deaf and unworthy Sons
Who see nothing of what they have made

In the air, on the water, where they have traced their signs

And since we did not understand the dead

Since we have never listened to their cries

If we weep, gently, gently

If we cry roughly to our torments

What heart will listen to our clamoring,

What ear to our sobbing hearts?

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Analysis of Piano And Drums, A Poem By Gabriel Okara

This page deal comprehensively  with analysis of "Piano And Drums", an African poem written by Gabriel Okara.

AUTHORIAL AND TEXTUAL BACKGROUND

Gabriel Okara is prominent among African poets. He was born in 1921 and raised to be an Ijaw man at Bumadi village in Niger Delta, Nigeria. His full name is known as Gabriel Imomotimi Gbaingbain Okara.

Gabriel Okara as an African renowned poet is noted to be someone who fathoms African culture right from the onset. He is cognizant of the ways at which Africans are biding with their cultural orientation. In such case, he exerts an African musical instrument, drum that is peculiar to their primitive culture to make a stand for Africans and their culture in his poetic presentation. The drum is actually a symbol plied by the poet in order to make delineation for Africans.

Ordinarily, there are some other things or items that can still stand as symbols for culture of Negros.
Bringing this closer, let Yoruba entity is taken as a case study to represent the whole Africa since Yoruba is one among enormous entities in the continent.

Primarily, drum is known as an instrument that its users sometimes use to carry on communication because drum as it is has its own language that can only be understood by learned individuals. Logically, drum normally is a musical instrument that provides beats to music. It provides rhythm to music and makes dancers perform to the tune.

Notwithstanding, drum is an instrument of communication that has its own language. Wole Soyinka and D. O Fagunwa in “The Forest of a Thousand Daemons” page seven say “like the sonorous proverb do we drum agidigbo (drum), it is the wise who dance to it, and the learned who understand its language.” This ratifies that the drum has its own language and the language can only be understood by people who had experience of how drum sounds.

Take for instance in some years dated back, there would be a set of drummers that would come to the king palace early in the morning to wake the king up with the drum. Once the drum sounded, the king would understand what his drummers were trying to orate with the drumming. That is drum at the stage of performing communication function.

Likewise among the drummers themselves, they used to communicate with one another with their drums especially when they did not want common people to get an earful of what they were telling one another let alone apprehending it. Yoruba used to say that “no one knows what drum is saying exactly like the drummer”. This is given confirmation that drum as an item of African culture has a language that can be interpreted only by learned.

This is what Africans had been addicted with before the arrival of the western people who introduced their culture that included instrument among which piano was one. No one in Africa had piano until white men barged into Africa. That is why the poem personae employs the piano to represent western culture and used drum to assume the role of African culture. The effect of European cultures can be seen among African ways of life that include speaking, dressing and others. This is the apprehension of the poet Gabriel Okara as depicted in the poem “Piano and Drum”.

Therefore in the poem, the poet conducts comparison and contrast between the drum and piano that indirectly indicates comparison between African culture and western culture. He is showing how he is feeling about both cultures. That is to say, whatever he says about piano is indirectly referring to European culture brought to Africa. In other words, whatever he says about the drum is indirectly attributing to culture of Africans. He actually uses both to present conflict that exists between the two worlds.

THE POETIC COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS

In lines 1 to 5 of the poem, the poem personae deploys that the “jungle drum” has been in usage from the beginning of African existence. In line one, “When at break of day at a riverside”, it can be concluded that the culture of Africans is natural and had been existed before something else. The “riverside” denotes natural phenomenon of Africans as associated with the drum which actually indicates that drum is natural possession from the basis.
Then, when getting to line seventeen, the poet introduces other instrument “piano” to be wailing. “Then I heard a wailing piano”. This describes the coming of the piano by the time it was been introduced to Africans. Looking at the poet’s choice of words right from line 12 down to line 16; it can be noted that choice of connotative words like “simple path with no innovation”, “rugged”, “fashioned”, “green leaves”, “warmth of hurrying and grouping hearts” denote that the drum and African culture seem to be simple and less sophisticated. The culture is described to be having been addicted with Africans before the western culture arrived.

As from line 17, the poet’s choice connotative words like “complex”, “coaxing diminuendo”, “counterpoint” and “crescendo” clarifies that the piano and the new culture is highly sophisticated. Its difficulty is capable enough to cause confusion in the minds of the people but drum is straightforward.

It can be concluded that the poem personae has clearly distinguished between the two separate worlds with the help of poetic devices which are symbolism and imagery. In other words, the side where the poet himself belongs to is clear as can be noted in his choice words for each of the musical instrument.

THE STRUCTURAL ORGANIZATION OF THE POEM

From the poem, it can be scrutinized that there are only four stanzas with 29 lines or verses in the poem. The first two stanzas have 16 lines together that make full description of the drum as the poet perceives it. In that, feature and peculiarities of African culture is portrayed. Whilst the other two stanzas with 13 lines describe piano and show how the poet personae perceives the culture of colonial masters. That shows the complexity and technicality of the culture.

The tone and mood atmosphere of the poem seems to be sad and displays that there is regret in the poet’s mind as a result of negligent side that Africans have turned to their culture.

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