Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics give it a powerful effect. He rebuts suggestions that the poem is an epic or exciting narrative, likening it instead to a strong masonry structure built of blocks that fit together. He points out that the poem's theme is a serious one, mortality, and that the poem is in two parts: the first on Beowulf as a young man, defeating Grendel and his mother; the second on Beowulf in old age, going to his death fighting the dragon. The work has been praised by critics including the poet and "Beowulf" translator Seamus Heaney. Michael D. C. Drout called it the
Beowulf Genesis, the Book of Exodus, and the Book of Daniel in its inclusion of references to the Genesis creation narrative, the story of Cain and Abel, Noah and the flood, the Devil, Hell, and the Last Judgment. The poem mixes the West Saxon and Anglian dialects of Old English, though it predominantly uses West Saxon, as do other Old English poems copied at the time. There is a wide array of linguistic forms in the "Beowulf" manuscript. It is this fact that leads some scholars to believe that "Beowulf" has endured a long and complicated transmission through all the main