How Tim OBrien Shows the Negative Side of Vietnam Essay Example for Free

How Tim OBrien Shows the Negative Side of Vietnam Essay In Tim OBriens The Things They Carried, OBrien talks about all the parts of the Vietnam War. It shows all the horrors and negative sides of the war and what it can do to men. Many men lose their lives as well as their best friends and comrades. War also changes the soldiers into something else thats not themselves, something evil. The Things They Carried shows the negative side of war through the imagery of the shitfield, the mental affects of the war, the hatred that can be shown by each person, the way war changes people, and the loss of companions. In the shitfield one sees everything that is bad about the war. Its dirty and mucky and its just depressing all around. While in the field the soldiers are bombarded my artillery fire so they have to sink into the muck to hide themselves. One of the soldiers, Kiowa, gets hit with one of the shells. Norman Bowker tries to pull him out of the muck but he cannot. All the men try to pull him out but they cannot. They lose a friend in Kiowa, who is lost and buried in the field, and it scars all the men for life especially when they try to pull him out of the muck. The loss of a good friend stings for OBrien. OBrien even says that he went down with Kiowa that day and he lost a part of himself in that field. Everyone lost a part of themselves there. OBrien describes what he saw of Kiowa as he was going down under the muck. Kiowa was almost completely under. There was a knee. There was an arm and a gold wristwatch and part of a boot. There were bubbles where Kiowas head shouldve been (OBrien 168). OBrien going down with Kiowa shows that there are other negative effects such as mental ones. The mental effects of the war are also very negative in The Things They Carried. War messes with peoples heads and Tim OBrien shows it in his book. I couldnt sleep; I couldnt lie still (Chen 77). This is a cause of all the blood and gore the soldier has seen. And this doesnt just speak for the one soldier who said it, it speaks for all the soldiers. The first stage is not being able to sleep, the next stage is losing your composure. Then men start to become paranoid during the war and some go crazy. Rat Kiley is a good example of this. He is a medic and he starts to go crazy. He says he hears noises in the night that arent there. He says that he hears the voices of the people dying at night. OBrien thinks its from all the gore and blood he sees day in and day out and its just getting to him but either way he loses it. Rat tells someone he is going to shoot himself so he can get out of there because of an injury. The next morning he shot himself (OBrien 223). Rat Kileys plan works and he gets to leave, but he apologizes to all the men for losing it and in turn they dont rat him out for what he did. Not only does the war mess with peoples heads during the war but also at other times. The mental effects also extend to after the war. The awful memories of war stick with some of the men long after they return home from the war. The post war stress is too much for Norman Bowker. He finds that when he returns home that its not the same to him and he cannot find his place in society. He feels empty inside and ever since the shitfield he feels incomplete. The lingering memory of not being able to pull Kiowa out of the muck sticks with him. He feels that he died there with Kiowa and this causes him to be depressed. He often talks about it with his dad saying that he wishes he could have pulled harder to get Kiowa out but he just couldnt because of the smell. Norman wrote Tim OBrien a letter about his last book. He said it was very good book but that he should have put a chapter in about the shitfield. OBrien finds out that eight months later Norman killed himself. Normans writes OBrien a letter saying there was no letter and he hung himself with a jump rope. Tim OBrien kills a man while hes in Vietnam. He still feels the effects of killing the man and the guilt years later. He remembers it very well when his daughter asks him a question. The question was if he had ever killed someone. OBriens guilt over the man he kills comes from questions his daughter asks him about the war. He feels the sting years later (Martin 2). OBrien also revisits the site of the shitfield with his daughter. He starts to remember all the bad things that happened and it hurts him. OBrien hates the bad memories; he hates a lot of things. Some of the men start to show hatred toward people who usually arent hateful. The men start to turn on each other in stressful situations when they would have never done it before. Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen got into a fistfight. It was about something stupid, a missing jackknife, but even so the fight was vicious. Strunks nose made a sharp snapping sound, like a firecracker (OBrien 62). The men show hatred in the fight and over nothing important at all. In other circumstances it mightve ended there. But this was Vietnam, where guys carried guns, and Dave Jensen started to worry. It was mostly in his head (OBrien 62-63). Dave Jensen starts to get paranoid and he hates Strunk for it. One afternoon he began firing his weapon into the air, yelling Strunks name. late that same night he borrowed a pistol, gripped it by the barrel, and used it like a hammer to break his own nose (OBrien 63). This just shows how hate is a part of Vietnam. OBrien also shows hate toward some of his comrades. In a firefight OBrien gets shot and needs help from the new medic Bobby Jorgenson, but Jorgenson freezes because hes too afraid and forgets to treat OBrien for shock. This causes him much more pain over the months because the wound wasnt treated right and in time. OBrien hates Jorgenson for it. I wanted to hurt Bobby Jorgenson the way hed hurt me (OBrien 200). Months later OBrien and Jorgenson talk. OBrien realizes that Jorgenson is really sorry and he cant bring himself to say how he feels about it and just says its ok. I hated him for making me stop hating him (OBrien 200). This isnt like OBrien to be hateful. He has become something hes not. The war changes the men into bad things, things that arent themselves. OBrien talk about how the war changes himself and his personality at times. Id come to this war a quiet, thoughtful sort of person. Id turned mean inside. Even a little cruel at times. Its a hard thing to admit, even to myself, but I was capable of evil (OBrien 200). OBrien also talks about how one comes over innocent and but one leaves with a different identity. You come over clean and you get dirty and then afterwards its never the same (OBrien 114). Other authors talk about how OBrien shows the physical and mental devastation caused by the war. Nowhere in The Things They Carried does OBrien explain more clearly the psychic devastation wrought by wartime trauma (Neilson 193). One sees the effect of the trauma even if the characters previous personalities arent known. The killing also has a big affect on OBrien. OBrien also talks about how the man he kills changes him because it is such a big deal to take a life. The author describes the soldier he kills. He describes everything from his wounds to his figure. He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay at the center of the red clay trail near the village of My Khe. His jaw was in his throat. His eye was shut, the other eye was a star shaped hole. I killed him. (OBrien 203). Once OBrien killed this man he was broken in to Vietnam. He no longer was clean, he was now dirty. His first kill hastens his loss of innocence (Herzog 133). The soldiers in the war arent the only ones who were changed by Vietnam. One soldier brings his girlfriend from the states to visit him in Vietnam. He has her flown in through cargo planes and brought to his camp. At first she is glad to see her boyfriend and one can tell they are in love because they spend every minute together. She begins to get curious though and wonders off camp many times to explore. Then one night she goes missing and she is gone for a couple of days. She returns with the Greenies or Green Berets. She tells him not to ask and not to worry about it and acts like she has done nothing wrong. This happens many other times and the soldier can tell that he is beginning to lose her. When she begins disappearing with the greenies and taking part in the night ambushes, she melts into a small, soft shadow' (Chen 90). She becomes something she originally wasnt. Mary Anne starts to become one with Vietnam and she totally forgets about her boyfriend. In the end she is lost forever to Vietnam. It becomes impossible to distinguish between Mary Anne and Vietnam (Chen 91). Her boyfriend loses her and she is lost to Vietnam. Just one of many casualties of the war. But in his final story OBrien moves from his concern with moral corruption and war to one even more universally human: death (OGorman 306). OBrien also loses many things in the war. The worst part of the Vietnam War that OBrien shows is his loss of companions and friends. The author talks many times about his comrades throughout the book. He loses many people close to him personally and physically. There are five deaths in the novel. Ted Lavender, Curt Lemon, Kiowa, Linda, and the slim Vietcong soldier (Martin 1). The worst is the loss of his good friend. OBrien loses his good and best friend there, Kiowa, in the shitfield. This death is the most devastating to him because of how it happened in the muck and because he was a good friend. Kiowa was gone. He was under the mud and water, folded in with the war: Kiowas death actually makes him a part of the shitfield (Chen 93). It is also very devastating because all of the men feel guilt about it because they couldnt pull him out in time to possibly save him. Kiowas death is also pointless and has no purpose except to cause pain to his friends. In the story of Kiowas death, we find a combination of senselessness of war with the guilt that must be carried by other (Martin 2). This death affects everyone in the platoon but not all deaths are gruesome and ugly. An accident kills one of the young men, named Curt Lemon, and its described by OBrien as an almost beautiful death. They were just goofing. There was a noise, I supposed, which mustve been the detonator, so I glanced behind me and watched Lemon step from the shade into bright sunlight.when he died it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms. (OBrien 70) The two soldiers are just playing a simple game and it all ends so suddenly. He is playing a game with another soldier, a game of toss with a smoke grenade, when he accidentally steps on a landmine (Martin 2). Lemon and OBrien werent as good as friends as him and Kiowa but it was a bothersome death because Lemon was so young. OBrien speaks of him stepping into the light, and then the blast sucks him up into the trees.what bothers OBrien is that Curt Lemon is just a kid (Martin 2). The death isnt all-beautiful. OBrien describes the mess that is made by the accident. The white bone of an arm.pieces of skin and something wet and yellow that mustve been the intestines (OBrien 89). Another casualty happens because of bad luck. Lee Strunk dies in battle during a firefight. OBrien describes the wound that Strunk gets. In October Lee Strunk stepped on a rigged mortar round. It took off his right leg at the knee.then he panicked. He tried to get up and run, but there was nothing left to run on (OBrien 65). Strunk didnt die right away but not all death occur right after the accident happens. Later we heard that Strunk died somewhere over Chu Lai (OBrien 66). The last death happens because of carelessness. Ted Lavender was always doped up and this in the end leads to his death. While going to the bathroom in the woods Lieutenant Cross is daydreaming and not keeping watch for enemy soldiers. While coming back from his bathroom break Lavender is shot in the head and killed on the spot. Cross never forgives himself for his death because he was daydreaming about girls and one of his men was killed. Several incidents in The Things They Carried reveal moments when the male soldiers cannot communicate with one another (Vernon 171). Death is only a small part of the whole picture. Tim OBrien shows many of the negative sides of the war to the reader in ways that the reader can see how bad war is. He uses the examples of his friends dying, the whole ordeal in the shitfield, how war changes the men including the mental effects, and by showing how hateful one can become because of the stressful situations and the things one sees. OBrien feels that he has to show all the negative sides of the war because he never wanted to go to war in the first place. Men go to war to fight battle that could be worked out peacefully and they fight and die for no reason. He feels that war is a bad thing and wants to show the reader that its a terrible thing and he does this very well. Even today war is a problem. Many young men are dying for no reason and it needs to stop. Works Cited Chen, Tina. Unraveling the Deeper Meaning: Exile and the Embodied poetics of Displacement in Tim OBriens The Things They Carried. Contemporary Literature 29.1 (spring 1998): 77-98. Herzog, Tobey C. Vietnam War Stories Innocence Lost. London: Routledge, 1992. Martin, Paul L. 24 March, 2008. http://plmartinwrite.blogspot.com/2007/11/things-they-carried.html Neilson, Jim. Warring Fictions. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 1998 OBrien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books, 1990. OGorman, Farrel. The Things They Carried as a Composite Novel. War, Lit, and the Arts. Vernon, Alex. Salvation, Storytelling and Pilgrimage in Tim OBriens the Things They Carried. Mosaic (Winnipeg) 36.4 (2003): 171+. Questia. 19 Mar. 2008 http://www.questiaschool.com/PM.qst?a=od=5002093009.

Comparing and Contrasting Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannus and Rita Doves The Darker Face of the Earth :: Comparison Compare Contrast Essays

Comparing and Contrasting Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus and Rita Dove's The Darker Face of the Earth Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus can be argued that it is related loosely to Rita Dove's The Darker Face of the Earth. This comparative and contrasting characteristics that can be seen within both plays make the reader/audience more aware of imagery, the major characters, plot, attitudes towards women, and themes that are presented from two very different standpoints. The authors Sophocles and Dove both have a specific goal in mind when writing the two plays. In this paper I will take a closer look of the two, comparing and contrasting the plays with the various elements mentioned previously. Sophocles style of plot structure was usually to begin in media res. This is particularly true of Oedipus Tyrannus. When the reader or audience is first introduced to the main character, Oedipus is already a grown man and king of his country. In the first few lines, talk of a "fiery plague ravaging the city" is mentioned (Sopochles 3). In the very early stages of the play the reader begins to feel pity for Oedipus and recognizes his suffering. The time span is also another important factor to consider when analyzing the plot structure. The play in its entirety takes place within a one to two day period. The flashback scenes into Oedipus' childhood give the audience a better sense of the big picture, but can be misleading when focusing on the time aspect element. The roles of the characters are particularly useful when comparing and contrasting Oedipus to Darker Face. Oedipus can be argued to be a sympathetic ruler of his people, "my heart must bear the strain of sorrow for all..." (4). He shows a strong desire to rid the land of its despair. Yet as the reader captures a more in-depth glimpse into Oedipus' soul, we find him to be a jealous, stubborn, "blind", guilty, and sinful man. Oedipus' character outwardly seems to want nothing more than to find the guilty persons involved in the murder of Laius, yet when given obvious clues he turns a blind eye, not wanting to know the truth behind the prophecy.

Learning and Good Manager Essay

Good managers are born, not made. Discuss this idea whilst exploring key characteristics of an effective manager. For a long time, many people have questioned whether a good manager is born naturally, or they can learn and train to become a good manager. For people who think that a good manager is born, they believe that an effective manager is born with some specific skills and characteristics that ordinary people do not have. â€Å"Charisma and trait are qualities which are generated from inside a person† (Junaid 2010). However, a stronger believes in nobody born with perfect competence. In fact, it is rarely to find people who just naturally good at anything. Achievement in life requires hard work, experience, and skills (Lash, J. 2007). Everyone can develop by learning and training to become better. They can change their attitude and acquire appropriate capability and attribute that required for a good manager. It is ambiguous in the aspect of good managers are born, not made, because there are many evidences and researches that explain how ordinary people can become a good manager. First and foremost, people who support the first reason that nature select a specific group of people to be a good manager by giving charisma and trait. According to Weber (1947) as cited by Raktabutr (2007), supernatural and particular forces grant charisma which is a precise quality of a personality to extraordinary person. Charisma and trait are the main factors that can make anyone become a well manager. For example, motivation is one of the key characteristic of an effective manager which is generate from inside, this type of characteristic is difficult to learn and understand. In such circumstance a proficient manager can considered as a leader, they have to know how to motivate other people in workplace. As Edward Deci (n. d. ) as cited by Llewellyn and Holt (n. d. ) write in why we do what we do: Understanding self-motivation. A place that feels connected, independent, and authorized is lead people to be self-motivated. Failure is a part of process that managers have to concede, because they have to encourage risk-taking and creativity. Effective managers have to build up the dynamic atmosphere in workplace to ensure that his co-worker and subordinate have passion to complete their task, and then it will make the outcome of their task effective and efficiency. Whereas, people who do not have this key distinctive, they can get in trouble when they have to motivate other people, because it is inconsistent to motivate to different people. Another key determinant that essential is self-confidence. Manager has to show his confidence to make his underling believe and respect to him, because manager cannot do everything they can only manage and assign task to his subordinate. While people who do not born with this ability, they can face the problem about how to act to other people to gain their trust and respect. These key characteristics are come from aptitude that manager can know immediately how to deal with problem. It could be said that other people who do not have charisma and trait cannot be a good manager, because these attributes ingrained with special people since they were born. There was an early psychological research, which were studied inborn characteristics or traits from successful leaders. The ascription is people can be a good manager if they could be found with these traits. Stogdill (1974) determine the following traits and skills as needful to manager, which consist of intelligence, conceptually skilled, imaginative, sagacious, management ability , convincing , interpersonal relations, adjustable to situations ,active to social environment ,commitment and achievement-orientated ,assertive ,cooperative , decided , trustworthy ,dominant, ardent, relentless, self-confident ,and repressive of stress. In the other hand, there are some evidences that explain how normal people who do not born with inherited specialties can learn and practice to become a good manager. Every person has to learn to acquire skills and cognition. â€Å"The most important skill for everyone is the ability to manipulate their learning† (Mcnamara, C. n. d. ). Everyone can gain a lot of benefit from learning, if they have high level of stimulus and self-directed reader. People can be a good manager by using Management development program, which is include both informal and formal method. For informal method, it can help everyone improve some key characteristics that requisite for a good manager by reading some articles, and discussing management with other people. Taking a course, seminar or workshop is another good opportunity for regular people to develop themselves to be a capable manager. There is an executive education program for manager has been provided by Harvard business school, the length of this course is around three months. This course accepts managers from all over the world. This full time course at Harvard business school offer precise learning experiences that allow managers to learn how to use vision to create effective management decision, and how to see organization as a whole picture. It is also cover all areas of management from accounting, finance, technology, operations, strategy, and marketing, international economy and organizational change. This program offers opportunity to participants to understand the key characteristics of a good manager. Almost 12,000 managers who have gone on to top leadership positions in some of the most well known companies in the world, after they graduated from this course. Therefore, it is clear that good manager can be made by training and learning, since there are plenty of ways to develop skills and characteristics by both formal and informal method. In conclusion, although, the people who born with unique skills and knowledge take advantage more than other people, normal people who want to be a good manager can expand their capability to acquire these requirements, if they have high commitment on their goal and work hard enough. Since nowadays, there are many courses and programs that provide for people to improve their abilities such as training class, which can determine and supply special skills that manager needs, and these type of programs are accepted by most organizations in the world. Thus, in my opinion, it is irrational that good manager is born. Every people can make themselves to become an effective manager, because everyone can define their own destiny.

Le Morte dArthur Essay - 826 Words

The Chivalric Code in Le Morte d?Arthur nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;An act of chivalry is described as the qualifications or character of the ideal knight. Knights were expected to uphold this code of conduct. In the English literature Le Morte d?Arthur, French for ?The Death of Arthur?, by Sir Thomas Malory, the characters display acts of chivalry from beginning to end. Though the code of chivalry contains many qualities or acts, nevertheless bravery, loyalty, and courtly love are demonstrated more throughout this literature. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Bravery is the mental or moral strength to venture and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty. Fear is what one feels when fighting, knowing that he or she could die. For example, when†¦show more content†¦In Book XVIII (Eighteen), Chapter VII (Seven), Sir Mador kidnapped Queen Guinevere. Lancelot knew that Mador was a strong knight, but because he was loyal to Guinevere and Arthur, he fought Mador. Another case of loyalty mixed with a touch of bravery is when Arthur?s knights fought to their death to save Arthur from Mordred. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Loyalty can also come without fight or bravery. When Arthur went to the lake to seek the sword Excalibur, he swore to grant Avalon?s Lady whatever gift she someday desired. Also, Merlin was known for telling Arthur about the future and what could happen if Arthur did not listen to him, and because of that, Arthur was loyal enough to Merlin to follow his wishes. Aside from being told what to do and what not to do, when Arthur was wounded and in the process of dying, Sir Lucan and Sir Bedivere were not going to leave Arthur unattended. They carried him to the next town. Also, when Queen Guinevere heard of the death of King Arthur, she ran off to Amesbury and became a nun, where she cursed herself for all her wrongdoing. Despite how it sounds, she expressed loyalty to the death of Arthur, by cleansing her soul so that she may join him again, one day in the after-life. One of Queen Guinevere?s main objectives of cleansing her soul was allowing her to forgive herself for the courtly love expressed between her and Sir Lancelot. Courtly love was a secret part of the chivalric code.Show MoreRelatedBetrayal in Malorys Le Morte D’Arthur 1138 Words   |  5 Pages Malory Paper Malorys Le Morte D’Arthur isnt known to be classic just because of Arthur-but rather the themes of family, love, revenge, identity, loyalty and betrayal. As King, Arthur is put in many situations that test the people he surrounds himself with. Therefore, betrayal has become a reoccurring theme. Throughout the novel, people are seen betraying each other. Betrayal has become familiar in a way to the members of the round table, ultimately leading to its demise. The acts of betrayalRead MoreCompare and Contrast Film Excalibur to Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’arthur992 Words   |  4 PagesCompare and Contrast Film Excalibur to Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur Literary works on the story of King Arthur and his cohorts is a story that had been narrated in several books and even modified in movies which typical illustrates the lives of the Arthurian legends. The story â€Å"The Excalibur† cannot be compared with any of the other versions of the Arthurian tales ever in history. Sir Thomas Malory’s version of the Arthurian tale took a French style and name in which some elementsRead More Identity in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur Essay2701 Words   |  11 PagesIdentity in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur It can be difficult to define the unifying themes of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur ; it can seem a tangle of random adventures mired with magic and religion, love and fate. What is the purpose behind all the seemingly similar adventures of so many similar knights? And what is the place that the books of Sir Trystram hold? These books make up the longest section of the work, yet Trystram plays no role in the search for the Holy Grail orRead More Comparing Piety in The Wakefield Mystery Plays, The Book of Margery Kempe, and Le Morte DArthur1225 Words   |  5 PagesComparing Notions of Piety in The Wakefield Mystery Plays, The Book of Margery Kempe, and Le Morte DArthur The monastic lifestyle that Launcelot and his knights adopt after their conversion is one that Margery Kempe might approve of -- doing penance, singing mass, fasting, and remaining abstinent. (MdA, 525) But Launcelots change of heart is not motivated by the emotions that move Kempe, nor is his attitude towards God the same as can be found in The Book of Margery Kempe and The WakefieldRead MoreMerlin From Le Morte DArthur And The Once And Future King1092 Words   |  5 Pagesjourney. Merlin from Le Morte D’Arthur is a supernatural aid who circumlocutory helps the hero by using his abnormal abilities to protect and give advice. Merlyn from from The Once and Future King is also a supernatural aid who uses his anomalistic abilities to protect and give advice, but he directly helps the hero. Both stories involve supernatural aids, but each help the hero in a contradistinctive way. Although Merlin appears as Arthur’s metaphysical aid in both Le Morte D’Arthur and The Once andRead MoreThe fall of Camelot: A Consequence of its Imperfect King1741 Words   |  7 PagesCamelot’s greatest strength may also have been its greatest flaw, the authoritative leadership of King Arthur. To tarnish Arthur’s image of perfection demands a closer inspection at where his story begins. For those familiar with Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, it is common knowledge that Arthur was a child begotten by means of adultery when his father, Uther Pendragon, disguised himself with magic so as to bed the Lady Igraine. Though, conceived and raised through a series of events entirely outRead MoreThe Truth Within a Myth Essay example1177 Words   |  5 Pagesa small fraction of the myth surrounding the Holy Grail, in his book, Le Morte DArthur. In the The Sangreal, Sir Malory gives an in depth account of The Knights of the Round Tables quest for the ever famous gilded cup. However, the tale of the Holy Grail does not begin nor end there. Within Christianity the form of the Grail is debatable, and throughout society the truth of the Grail is questionable. In Le Morte DArthur, Sir Thomas Malory describes a quest in which the Knights of the RoundRead MoreMiddle Ages: The Beginning of a Rebirth in Literature Essay898 Words   |  4 PagesRome and the Renaissance, which the Middle Ages conjoins. Historically, it may not have a substantial impact, but it was the beginning of a rebirth in literature. When analyzing works of literature from the Middle Ages, in particular Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, politics abundantly influence the social structure, outlook, and actions of characters. The politics in the Middle Ages was known as feudalism. Feudalism can be interpreted and understood by a pyramid, illustrated in the image above. OutsideRead MoreThemes in Sir Gareth1078 Words   |  5 PagesSir Thomas Malory wrote Le Morte d’Arthur in the middle of the fifteenth century and it has now become a paradigmatic representation of Middle English Literature. In this essay I am going to look closely at a section of The Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkney; paying close attention to style, theme and lexis used as well as looking at how this passage fits into the society of the fifteenth century. The extract I am going to examine is situated close to the start of the narrative; hence itRead MoreFate Or Free Will Controls Human Lives1609 Words   |  7 Pagescommands and the morals established by the society. Those who adhere to these ideals shall be honoured, favoured, revered, and treated with respect in the same way Beowulf was rewarded having followed God’s will. In Sir Thomas Malory’s book, Le Morte d’Arthur, fate and free will emerge as the central themes. However, unlike in â€Å"Iliad† and â€Å"Beowulf†, the book focuses on free will and fate almost on equal measures. For instance, the absence of magic in some parts of the story makes it possible for individuals