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 reciting them, and only much later written down. In his landmark work, "The Singer of Tales", Albert Lord refers to the work of Francis Peabody Magoun and others, saying "the documentation is complete, thorough, and accurate. This exhaustive analysis is in itself sufficient to prove that Beowulf was composed orally." Examination of "Beowulf" and other Old English literature for evidence of oral-formulaic composition has met with mixed response. While "themes" (inherited narrative subunits for representing familiar classes of event, such as the "arming the hero", or the particularly well-studied "hero on the beach" theme) do exist across Anglo-Saxon and other