Sаmаrkаnd stаtе institutе оf fоrеign lаnguаgеs fоrеign lаnguаgе аnd litеrаturе

Chapter II. The role of Evil and Good in the poem “Beowulf”

2.1. Good versus Evil in Beowulf

The struggle between good and evil is a perennial conflict that has been ongoing throughout human history. It has been unfolding from the time of the first man and woman. It is also one of the most common conventional themes in literature and is sometimes considered to be a universal part of the human condition. This paper attempts to discover and reveal the elements of the clash between good and evil in Beowulf and the Book Dede Korkut. The title character in Beowulf, as a representative of goodness, fearlessly and gallantly faces Grendel, his mother, and the dragon who are the embodiments of evil in this epic poem. On the other hand, in the Book of Dede Korkut, evil is represented by a goggle-eyed monster named Tepegoz and tyrant and cruel tekurs (feudal landlords) who oppress people and inflict them different sufferings. Heroes fight with these people to relieve people of their problems. One of the heroes, Basat avenges his brother's death and delivers people from the oppression of evil that goes by the name of Tepegoz (goggle-eyed monster), who terrorizes people and causes chaos among the people of the community. Other heroes, such as Salur Kazan, Segrek, and Yigenek, fight with evil tekurs to free their loved ones and to deliver their people from the dangers of these personifications of evil [15,404].
Good and evil have been in the hearts of men and women since the dawn of creation. It has been unfolding from the time of the first man and woman. The story of Cain and Abel, included in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, features two sons of Adam and Eve, the forefathers of humanity. Cain committed the first act of murder by slaying his brother Abel. The dispute between these two brothers demonstrates the prevalent opinion that this clash between good and evil is an integral part of human life. They expose two features staying hidden in the human soul: the ability to commit good and the ability to commit evil. The two brother's narrative was transformed, according to Florentino Martinez, "into a symbol of the perennial conflict between good and evil".
This conflict between good and evil is also one of the most commonly studied themes and is also regarded to be a part of being human. Theodore Dreiser regards it as an "ever-present problem" and further states that "in fact, man's belief that he is free implies that he is endowed with a dual power; on the one hand, that he is capable of discerning good and evil and knows what he should do and what he should avoid (right and wrong), and, on the other, having made this distinction, that it lies within his power to conform his conduct to his choice". Furthermore, Martin Buber makes the following comment: "good and evil are not, as they usually thought to be, two structurally-similar qualities situated at opposite poles, but two qualities of totally different structure" [16,62].
As mentioned briefly above, there are several varieties of this conflict: first being the clash between individuals and their beliefs or opinions in which one party representing good and the other evil, and the second being the internal conflict within people themselves often emerged in the form of struggle for the human soul to decide between good and evil. These concepts of good and evil have found their expression in the works of many distinguished literary figures such as John Milton, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Joseph Conrad. John Milton, in Paradise Lost, portrays the struggle between the good and evil angels in which the defeat of the latter causes their banishment from heaven. Goethe addresses a similar conflict in Faust when portraying the struggle between good and evil angels to gain control over Faust.
Faust finds the evil angel,
Mephisto, to be more persuasive and decides to strike a deal that allows him to acquire the services of Mephisto in exchange for his soul.
Joseph Conrad describes human being's inner capacity to carry out good or evil in his novella Heart of Darkness. Through Marlow, Conrad exposes human beings' inherent capacity to do good or evil. Buber also addresses these facets of good and evil and states the following:
It is usual to think of good and evil as two poles, two opposite directions, the two arms of a signpost pointing to right and left; they are understood as belonging to the same plane of being, as the same in nature, but the antithesis of one another. If we are to have in mind, not ethical abstractions, but existent states of human reality, we must begin by doing away with this convention and recognizing the fundamental dissimilarity between the two in nature, structure and dynamics within human reality. Every individual has this inclination to go between good and evil. This is inherent in his or her nature. It is the existing human condition and is a quite challenging task for them to choose one over another.
In traditional folk literature, there is a clear-cut and well-defined difference between good and evil. This difference symbolizes the ethical morality of the people as well as their respective communities. No matter which party defeats the other, the moral lesson of the narrative aims to strengthen the unity, harmony, and values of that particular society. In classical literature, Aristotle outlined the characteristics of an ideal tragic hero. An Aristotelian tragic hero is a man who is characterized by good and evil and who possesses a mixture of good and bad characteristics. The tragic hero is not an ordinary man but a man with outstanding quality and greatness about him. He is good, though not perfect. Aristotle, in Nichomachean Ethics, asserts his opinion on good and evil as such: "For it is our choice of good or evil that determines our character, not our opinion about good or evil" [17,717].
The literature of divine religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) is concerned with the epitome of the fight between good and evil - the eternal conflict between God and Satan. On the other hand, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in Emile, puts forward his views on these concepts of good and evil thus: "God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil.... [a]ll wickedness comes from weakness. The child is only naughty because he is weak; make him strong and he will be good; if we could do anything we should never do wrong". Immanuel Kant notes that the good is acquired but the evil is brought upon us. He further makes the following comment: "Evil is possible only as a determination of free will, and since the will can be appraised as good or evil by means of its maxims, this propensity to evil must consist in the subjective ground of the possibility of the deviation of the maxims from moral law".
Epic defined - Epic poetry has been enjoying literary status as the most effective and powerful writing of all times. Not many authors have been fortunate enough to create such unique and well-written masterpieces that reflect the cultural aspects of various societies. Communities, throughout the world, have been shaped to a great extent by inspiring narratives of gallant heroes, gods, and heroic battles that injected strong morals into the hearts of mankind in the works of epic poets like Homer and Dante. The epic poem narrates the stories from the ancient past filled with heroism and savagery, where the foundations of civilizations were laid. It is a long narrative poem that generally recounts the details of significant valiant acts and achievements of a legendary hero from a nation or community. No other literary figures relate the turbulent and clamorous rise and fall of civilizations effectively to the epic poets of ancient as well as contemporary times [18,98].
Epic, as a genre, is quite different from other genres of literature in terms of its content and style. The word 'epic' is originated from the Ancient Greek word epos which came to mean "word, poem or story". Epic masterpieces manage to detain the underpinning characteristics of the entire community in themselves by including heroic battles, treasons, romance, extended journeys, and supernatural beings together with elevated language. John Miles Foley says the following: "epic is the master-genre of the ancient world. Wherever and whenever one looks, epics had major roles to play in ancient societies, functions that ranged from historical and political to cultural and didactic and beyond. As charters for group identity, ancient epics seem always to have been at the center of things".
Beowulf is generally considered as one of the fundamental literary works of Anglo-Saxon literature. It is the oldest enduring sample of an epic poem composed in Old English and is also the primal source of vernacular English. It originally had no title but began to be associated in the 19th century with the name of its hero, Beowulf, whose heroic journeys and legendary undertakings had been its main center of attraction. Although there are historical allusions throughout the work, the hero as well as the storyline are products of fictive imagination. Beowulf might have originally been written as a requiem after a heroic king who may have died in the seventh century, but there is not much proof to identify who that demised king could have been. However, the burial rites portrayed in the epic poem bear a great resemblance to the proof located at the burial site in Sutton Hoo, but there is no chance to establish a direct correlation between the poem and the graveyard since too much yet stays to be unknown. This work of epic was thought to be written between 700 and 1000 A.D. and underwent several changes until it was finally
composed. Robert Fletcher states the following about the epic poem:
"Beowulf presents an interesting though a very incomplete picture of the life of the upper, warrior, caste among the northern Germanic tribes during their later period of barbarism on the Continent and in England, a life more highly developed than that of the Anglo-Saxons before their conquest of the island". Archibald Strong, who translated Beowulf into modern English verse, emphasizes its historical importance in such words: "Beowulf is the picture of a whole civilization, of the Germania...The main interest which the poem has for us is thus not purely literary. Beowulf is an important historical document". On the other hand, Johannes Arend states that "of what time has spared of Anglo-Saxon poetry, the Beowulf poem is the most complete and at the same time the most important, as it presents not only a scene of the morals and customs, of the concepts and sentiments of those far remote centuries, but also because it is undoubtedly the oldest romance which now exists in any European vernacular, after the fall of the Roman Empire" [19,53].