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 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