Blog 1:

In the beginning of this excerpt, Unferth begins to talk about Beowulfs swimming match with Breca. In this swimming match, Beowulf lost. Unferth talks about how it was sort of embaracing for Beowulf to loose something as simple as a swimming match, when he is supposed to be this influential person. Unferth is a jealous man. He is normally considered the powerful and heroic person among the Danes, but now that Beowulf came, and offered to take care of protecting Heorot, he isn't considered as powerful anymore. For twelve years, Grendel had been attacking the mead- hall, and he hadn't been able to do anything about it, and now there is a man who is confident in himself that he will be able to stop this monster. Unferth is jealous that the attention is away from him, so he is trying to make Beowulf sound weaker than he is. Beowulf responds to this by saying that he might have lost the actual swimming match, but he won many more battles within this match than Unferth has given him credit for. The whole time he was swimming the match, he was being attacked by huge sea monsters. He continued to swim, but fought and killed these monsters the whole way. By the time the match was over, he had killed nine sea monsters, and protected the seas for all sailors. This is something that adds to Beowulfs heroic qualities in many ways. First off, Beowulf was able to talk his way out of being humiliated. Articulateness is a quality found in many heros. Also, he took a situation that was bad for him, and turned it into this epic journey where he did all of these wonderful things. He was able to take a situation where he lost, and turn it into this time when he cleaned the seas of all dangerous threats. He gave up the competition in order to save all of the sailors. This is very heroic of him.