The dragon (Beowulf) in 1953 that the dragon's "ultimate significance in the poem" remains a "mystery". Seamus Heaney suggests that Beowulf's attitude towards fighting the dragon reflects his "chthonic wisdom refined in the crucible of experience", that is there is already a "beyond-the-grave aspect" to his resoluteness. As Beowulf dies from his fight with the dragon, despite defeating it, James Parker of "The Atlantic" writes that "There is no transcendence in "Beowulf", and no redemption [...] kill the dragon—but the dragon will get you anyway". Joan Acocella states in "The New Yorker" that "unlike Grendel and his mother, [the dragon] is less a
Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics young Beowulf and the old Hrothgar. The poem's metre, too, is founded on a balance of two halves to each line, "more like masonry than music". Tolkien argues that the poem is not meant to be an exciting narrative, nor a romantic story, but a word-picture, "a method and structure that ... approaches rather to sculpture or painting. It is a composition not a tune." Far from being weakly structured, it "is curiously strong". It Tolkien takes a moment to dismiss another criticism, that monsters should not have been made to appear in both halves. He replies he can see