Beowulf 163vegetables. All night they heard him mourn from
his hiding place “as if he had, in fact, been guilty
of some heinous crime.” Reflecting on the story,
Maya concludes that she would have nothing to say
in defense of the sheriff who, after having warned
them, self-righteously believed “that things were as
they should” and “that he was a gentle squire, sav-
ing those deserving serfs from the laws of the land,
which he condoned.”
Apart from the times that blacks and whites are
forced to interact, there is a feeling in the novel that
they live in parallel universes. The social organiza-
tion that separates “powhitetrash” from respectable
people is duplicated in Stamps, and Mrs. Flow-
ers—who Maya says “made me proud to be a Negro,
just by being herself ”—is described as “our side’s
answer to the richest woman in town.” Maya reflects,
however, that it is lucky she never encountered Mrs.
Flowers near “powhitetrash,” because she would
have heard her being addressed as “Bertha,” and
Maya’s “image of her would have been shattered like
the unmendable Humpty-Dumpty.”
The clash between the black and the white
societies culminates in the scene where Maya/Mar-
guerite describes her graduation. She starts the day
with a sense of great achievement, aware that she is
graduating at the top of her class. But what begins
as a gay celebration of an important event is sym-
bolically interrupted by the appearance of a white
man. The usual order of the ceremony, which is to
begin with the American national anthem, followed
by the pledge of allegiance and then what is known
as the Negro national anthem, is interrupted by the
white man, who gives a speech before the assembled
congregation has had a chance to sing “their” song.
The man is a high official who informs them that
the central school—“(naturally, the white school
was central)”—has been going through improve-
ments, and that he intends their school to follow
suit; he then leaves as if their graduation ceremony
“had been a mere preliminary” and he now was “off
to something really important.” The speech has
reminded Marguerite and her friends of the limita-
tions put on black people’s existence, and suddenly
their festive mood is gone, and they are only aware
of the lack of control that characterizes their lives.
Angelou’s tale exposes the great injustice with
which blacks were treated. It also, however, induces
in its reader the knowledge that even in the face of
great injustice, individuals choose how to react. In one
scene, for example, Maya witnesses Momma being
abused by white girls, who call her by her first name
and expose their genitals to her. Momma remains
calm throughout the incident and politely addresses
them as “Miz” when they leave. Maya bursts out cry-
ing, but when her grandmother patiently waits until
she meets her eyes, Maya discovers that Momma is
happy and comments: “Whatever the contest had
been out front, I knew Momma had won.”
Eva LupinANONYMOUS Beowulf (ca. 1000)
Beowulf is the longest and most complete surviving
poem in Old English. The work probably circulated
orally for centuries before being written down by
scribes around the year 1000. It consists of 3,182
lines of alliterative verse. The poem’s plot, is straight-
forward and has the quality of a folktale, following
recognizable patterns of myth: A young hero sets
out on a sea journey to battle monsters. After dis-
patching two humanoid horrors in deadly combat,
the victorious hero journeys back home to rule his
own kingdom until he finally clashes with a dragon
who kills him, though he wins glory and fame. But
Beowulf also alludes to several battles and events in
the past and future, at times digressing for several
lines to narrate the action of a feud, battle, or heroic
event; the poem’s allusive, interlacing quality makes
it difficult and complex.
But Beowulf is worth the struggle. For genera-
tions, teachers and students have enjoyed this tale of
dragon slaying and troll combat set against the back-
ground of human feuding and warfare among the
Danes, Frisians, Jutes, Swedes, and Geats. Legend-
ary heroes like Beowulf and Wiglaf stand toe to toe
with figures from history such as Hygelac, Hrothgar,
and Ingeld. Though the poem cannot be considered
historically accurate in a modern sense, Beowulf
offers an uncannily familiar window into the alli-
ances, truces, feuds, and political intrigues taking
place in the Germanic heroic world. It continues
to fascinate readers also because of its expression of