How Beowulf Can Save America

Over the weekend Julia and I spent a lovely weekend with my son Darien and his wife Betsy in Manhattan.  I met their midwife and heard the heartbeat of my soon-to-be grandchild, played tennis with Darien on some public courts in Harlem (Saturday was gorgeous), went to a very interesting post-apocalyptic play by the New Ohio Theatre Company (Samuel & Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot War), ate brunch with my novelist friend Rachel Kranz, had long conversations with Darien about his marketing business (Discovering Oz, in case you’re looking to market a book, play, film or small business or to set up a website), and wrote the final chapter to my upcoming book while sitting on a park bench overlooking the East River.

The book, which with Darien’s help I am self-publishing, is entitled How Beowulf Can Save America: An Epic Hero’s Guide to Defeating the Politics of Rage.  When the February publication date arrives, I will tell readers of this blog how they can get a free electronic version if they wish one.  Today, as a teaser, I share with you excerpts from the introduction.

Excerpt from introduction to How Beowulf Can Save America

By Robin Bates

Midway through Beowulf, King Hrothgar, at peace for the first time in years, awakens to discover that a second monster has attacked Heorot Hall, killing his best friend. “Rest, what is rest?” he cries out piteously when Beowulf asks how he is faring. “Sorrow has returned.”

A number of Americans feel that way today.  In 2008, dreaming that their nation could move beyond the bitter partisanship of the 21st century’s first decade, they elected a brave young warrior as their leader.  Instead of “changing the way Washington works” and ushering in a new spirit of cooperation, however, Barack Obama saw the political divides grow yet more toxic.  The promising young warrior became a discouraged king.

Indeed, it has been a long time since things were this bad.  To be sure, the years leading up to the American Civil War were worse, but for most of the 20th century Democrats and Republicans engaged in give and take when it came to America’s future.  For all their posturing, the two parties found enough common ground to keep the ship of state afloat.

A new kind of confrontation entered American politics in the 1990’s, however, when House Republican Leader Newt Gingrich closed down the government in a standoff with the White House.  Things heated up further when Republicans recklessly tried to impeach the president for no more than an extramarital affair.  Now, after eight years of Republican presidential rule, a GOP under the sway of the extreme right has resumed its take-no-prisoners opposition to the White House. . . .

As a result, an un-American defeatism has settled over the land. Like the Dragon in Beowulf, people hunker down in a simmering rage that explodes from time to time in angry temper tantrums. Societies must share certain conventions and maintain certain levels of communication if they are to operate effectively, and when, as is increasingly the case, Americans see each other as “the enemy,” collective problem solving goes by the wayside. Attempts at civil conversation, rational discourse, and mature compromise are greeted with slash and burn responses. Too often, it seems, rage gets the last word and “Yes we can” becomes replaced by “No we can’t.”

Enter Beowulf, a work that understands rage very well.  If England’s earliest epic seems particularly relevant today—so much so that, in the past ten years, there have been two movie versions and a translation that (against all predictions) made it on to the New York Times bestseller list—it is because there are unsettling historical parallels.  True, Americans do not live in perpetual fear of being overrun by enemies, as many 9th century Anglo-Saxon tribes did.  We are a far more stable society.  But we too are experiencing a perpetual roiling anger that tears at our social fabric.

Beowulf has much to teach us because it understands the different shapes that anger can take and anger’s potential for destroying societies. I will be showing how we can apply that knowledge to our own versions of the poem’s fabled monsters, arriving at a better sense of the toll they exact upon us.  By entering the poem, we get an up-close-and-personal acquaintance with destructive rage.  When we immerse ourselves in a literary reenactment of tumultuous emotions, it is as though we experience them simultaneously from within and without.  We learn to make sense of them. . . .

Anglo-Saxon England was an unstable patchwork of warring tribes not unlike Afghanistan today only with no central government.  In addition to external threats, these tribes also experienced internal dissension and were often in danger of flying apart.  Since social instability had serious consequences—a weak tribe could be overrun by a strong one, resulting in death for the men and slavery for the women and children—the people were well acquainted with fear and with the anger that accompanies fear.

That’s why the Anglo-Saxons probably found the monsters in Beowulf scarier than the scariest horror film you have ever seen.  When one’s very life is at risk, symbolic representations of threatening dangers one focus the mind wonderfully.  In Grendel, early audiences would have seen the jealous rage that could take a man over and cause him to wield his sword against a fellow warrior. In Grendel’s Mother, they saw a deeper rage, closely associated with emotional loss.  They probably had felt such anger themselves and also saw its destructive acting out in the interminable blood feuds that perpetually undermined their society.

In the Dragon, finally, they would have seen “an element of overweaning” that could descend upon a king and make him grasping and mean.  Anglo-Saxon society relied on a free circulation of wealth—warriors loyally handed over their treasure to the king, who was supposed to fairly redistribute it amongst them—and greed in a king disrupted this social contract and put the tribe at risk.

So who are our own monsters? When I first set out to write this book, it was Grendel who seemed most relevant.  One of the most disturbing developments of the past 30 years is the way that human monsters have sporadically stormed our schools, churches and other public spaces with automatic weapons.    But even if we leave aside these killers as aberrations, we see a new readiness of regular citizens to verbally lash out against their neighbors, whether these be undocumented workers, American Muslims, married gay couples, delinquent homeowners, or the like.   In America today, when it comes to certain scapegoats, otherwise decent people harden over and say ugly things.

By using Beowulf to examine this anger, I discovered there is more to it than just resentment of the Other.  The rage seems to be connected to a deep sorrow, as though those who are outraged, like Grendel’s Mother, have lost something precious.  There has been an angry grieving for a lost America, and we hear paeans to an earlier golden age, sometimes to 1950’s homogeneous (white) suburban communities, sometimes to a small-government frontier West, sometimes to the Tea Party America of the founding fathers. Like Grendel’s Mother, Americans do not always respond to their sorrow in healthy ways.

But the poem does not end with vengeful sorrow.  As I pushed my exploration further, I came to believe that the Dragon, more even than the Grendel family, is key to understanding our conflicted society.  The Dragon in Beowulf is a black block of gloom, hoarding society’s wealth and lashing out against attempts to circulate it more freely.  In our own case, we watch middle class incomes stagnate while the grow ever wealthier.  To cite an instance, in the 1970’s America’s wealthiest one percent took in less than 9 percent of the nation’s income.  In 2007, they controlled 23.5 percent.  When society’s wealth and power become concentrated in relatively few hands, cynicism about the potential for significant social change begins to fester.

In short, Beowulf monsters are alive and well as they wreak havoc on political discourse, general civility, and even America’s essential identity.  Like Grendel they tear us apart, like Grendel’s Mother they pull us down into a deep mire of depression, like the Dragon they lock us into a dark cave of bitterness.  The can-do confidence that defines America is under assault.

There is good news in Beowulf as well, however.  After all, the monsters are defeated and, with each defeat, society is filled with a new hope.  The even numbered chapters show what it takes to defeat jealous resentment, the ravages of grief, and entrenched cynicism.  We can find both guidance and inspiration by paying close attention to what Beowulf and others do to fight these monsters.

When I say that Beowulf can help us fight anger, I should make it clear that I am not just talking about the anger we see in others.  I am also referring to the anger we find in ourselves.  A key insight provided by Beowulf is that, when we fight monsters, there is a danger of becoming monsters ourselves.  When we respond angrily to Grendel or Grendel’s Mother or the Dragon, we can become trolls and dragons ourselves.  Beowulf is not designed to turn us into angry warriors but into effective ones.

Beowulf gives voice to the poem’s message. As Hrothgar bemoans his fate, the Geat warrior all but tells the king to get a grip. “Bear up,” he says firmly, “and be the man I expect you to be.”

We live in difficult times and cannot afford self pity. Beowulf shows us what we must do to save our country.  Consider it as manual for modern day citizen warriors.

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