Beowulf As A Mythic Hero

Joseph Campbell has set the standard for the steps a person takes before they can be classified as a hero, but he did not do this until after the writing and translation of Beowulf. Beowulf, a story that was told in the early 100s and wrote within the same time period, is the story of an average Nordic viking that is called to Herot by the king to get rid of an evil monster named Grendel that is terrorizing the town of Herot. If you were to look at how the story is told though, you can see how even before The Hero With a Thousand Faces was wrote that Joseph Campbell’s steps of becoming/being a hero are echoed through the story of Beowulf. To answer the question of if Beowulf qualifies as a mythic hero when comparing him to the story wrote by
Campbell, I say that Beowulf does qualify. One way you can tell that Beowulf can be classified as a hero is that in Chapter 2 in Beowulf, Grendel is the threshold guardian of Herot. Even though Grendel may not be stopping Beowulf from entering Herot, Grendel is still considered the threshold guardian because he prevents Beowulf from continuing on his journey that he was on. In The Hero With a Thousand Faces, The Arcadian god Pan is considered a threshold guardian because he would not allow people to enter the forest unless they beared gifts for Pan. Another example is in Chapter 12 of Beowulf, when Beowulf is “stuck” in Grendel’s mother’s underwater lair where he defeats both Grendel and his mother. In The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Herakles was swallowed by a sea monster and sliced through the belly of the monster to get out of it. When Campbell wrote The Hero With a Thousand Faces, he wanted the readers to imply a few things while they were reading it.
One of those two things were that everyone has their own difficulties that they must face in life. Now everyone may not be a hero, but to someone they may be and can be a good example of how to overcome difficult situations when faced with one. The second implication was that everyone has a person that is a tempter and will tempt them to do something that the person may not normally do. There will always be the one person in the crowd that is trying to convince everyone to do something preposterous, but there is no need in listening to them. Just simply ignore that person. Now Beowulf did have a couple of things that they wanted you to implicate, one of those things being that everyone has something they are great at. Whether it be a hobby or the career they choose, there is something everyone is good at. The second thing is that everyone may have one or more than one test in life. Some people may just have one large test and be done, whereas others, like Beowulf, will have more than one test in their lifetime. To conclude upon all of this, The Hero With a Thousand Faces and Beowulf may have been wrote centuries away from each other, but they still both carry the same steps a hero must take in order to be considered a hero. Beowulf is also considered one of the oldest hero stories ever, and it might be where Campbell got his ideas for what a hero has to do in order to gain the title “hero”. So do I believe that Beowulf qualifies as a mythic hero according to Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces? Yes, I do believe that Beowulf is more that
qualified.