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Monday
Three weeks ago I made a “Beowulfian Case for Keeping Joe Biden.” The post focused on how the poem explores the problem of dragon kings, a serious issue in king-dependent warrior society. I noted that there are three different kinds of kings that show up in this drama: kings who lash out at those around them, kings who become depressed and retreat into themselves, and kings shoulder all their society’s burdens, thereby disempowering those around them.
Heremod is the most noteworthy of the paranoid kings and the one who most resembles Donald Trump. The poem describes him as follows:
He vented his rage on men he caroused with,
killed his own comrades, a pariah king
who cut himself off from his own kind,
even though Almighty God had made him
eminent and powerful and marked him from the start
for a happy life. But a change happened,
he grew bloodthirsty, gave no more rings
to honor the Danes.
Among the depressed kings is Hrethel, who retreats into his bed after his eldest son is killed in a hunting accident and never recovers; the “last veteran,” who withdraws into a funeral barrow with all his wealth after having lost everyone around him; and potentially the Danish king Hrothgar, whom Beowulf has to pull out of gloom after his best friend is killed by Grendel’s Mother.
Beowulf is the best of these dragon kings and the one who most resembles Biden. Here’s what I wrote in my previous post:
Beowulf has had a spectacularly successful 50-year reign, but when dragonhood begins to descend, he makes what some consider to have been Biden’s mistake. Instead of passing the kingdom along to a successor, he insists on remaining king, thinking that only he can defeat the foe. Biden, some of his critics have charged, thinks that only he can defeat Trump, while Beowulf thinks the same about the dragon. As he instructs his warriors,
Men at arms, remain here on the barrow,
safe in your armor, to see which one of us
is better in the end at bearing wounds
in a deadly fray. This fight is not yours,
nor is it up to any man except me
to measure his strength against the monster
or to prove his worth. I shall win the gold
by my courage, or else mortal combat,
doom of battle, will bear your lord away.One reason for Beowulf’s confidence, and for Biden’s, is his past record. And yes, there is some hubris involved. Thinking that one can defeat the dragon by oneself is itself a dragon trait:
Beowulf spoke, made a formal boast
for the last time: “I risked my life
often when I was young. Now I am old,
but as king of the people I shall pursue this fight
for the glory of winning, if the evil one will only
abandon his earth-fort and face me in the open.”
Beowulf is able to go out a hero, not a dragon, because he accepts help from another. His nephew Wiglaf disregards his order to stay away and wades into the battle, distracting the dragon enough that Beowulf is able to kill it. In my post, I argued that Biden is surrounded by Wiglafs—the presidency is not a one-person job, after all—and I thought that the quality people that Biden has chosen in his administration and the competent state administrators that come to power because of his sterling presidency could carry us through. It did not matter, I believed, that Biden had lost a step. As I saw it, the advantages of incumbency outweighed the fact that he has lost a step.
But I suppose we could also see, as Wiglafs, those who persuaded the president to step down. If they are right—if Kamala Harris stands a better chance of saving American democracy than Biden—then they should be seen as heroes in their own right. Willing to brave Biden’s dragon fire, they pressured him to do the right thing, saving Biden from dragonhood. As Tom Nichols of Atlantic puts it,
My colleague Franklin Foer (who has written a biography of Biden) noted today that the Biden of the past few weeks was a less than admirable figure: He was a defensive, brittle old man who didn’t want to be told he could no longer lead the party on the field of political battle.
And then the heroic part:
Biden’s decision reflected a determination to put the fate of his country ahead of his personal vanity, a choice Trump is inherently incapable of making.
These Wiglafs had better be right, however—because if they are not and if Democrats lose an election they could have won, then we will face a version of what happens to Beowulf’s people. Wiglaf forecasts the future, which he’s able to do fairly accurately as the poet, looking back at the time the poem is set, knows that the Geats will eventually be vanquished by the Swedes:
Now War is looming
over our nation, soon it will be known
to Franks and Frisians, far and wide,
that the king is gone….
Nor do I expect peace or pact-keeping
of any sort from the Swedes.
[T]hey will cross our borders
and attack in force when they find out
that Beowulf is dead.
But not to end on a dark note, here’s the wealth that Beowulf and Wiglaf, working together, liberate through their joint effort:
[Wiglaf] saw beyond the seat
a treasure-trove of astonishing richness,
wall-hangings that were a wonder to behold,
glittering gold spread across the ground,
the old dawn-scorching serpent’s den
packed with goblets and vessels from the past…
And he saw too a standard, entirely of gold,
hanging high over the hoard,
a masterpiece of filigree; it glowed with light
so he could make out the ground at his feet
and inspect the valuables.
The policies that Biden set in motion and that Harris will continue has made America the economic envy of the world. Isolationist Trump, with his anti-immigrant threats and his promise of billionaire tax cuts, hunkers down in an America that he wants to turn into a dragon’s cave.
