Beowulf's fight with the dragon is a puzzle. On the surface, it appears to be the hero's final victory and the fitting conclusion to his noble life. However, the circumstances surrounding the battle – Beowulf's contempt for the advice of his nobles and the Geats' bleak future without their king – raise acute questions about Beowulf and his motivations. Nowhere else in the poem are the hero's actions described as anything but right and good." It is not surprising that this topic has attracted considerable critical attention. Some critics insist that Beowulf's decisions regarding the dragon are entirely in accord with the heroic ideal.1 Others argue that Beowulf sought the dragon for selfish and proud reasons.2 In a sense, the riddle of the battle of the dragon is the key to Beowulf. Any serious attempt to make sense of the episode inevitably leads to conclusions about the arc of Beowulf's life and the theme of the poem as a whole. Here I will examine two opposing visions of Beowulf's heroism in the context of the dragon and offer my own reading of the poem, in which Beowulf's heroism against the dragon and the Grendelkins serves as a counterpoint to the unrelenting violence of the Anglo-Saxon world. .Generally speaking, there are two ways to interpret Beowulf's final fight and the arc of his life; one sees Beowulf's heroism as a virtue or as a flaw. Among the defenders of Beowulf's virtuous heroism is John D. Niles, who pointed out in 1986 that before the second half of the 20th century, most readers of Beowulf were not "troubled by the suspicion that the poem's superficial simplicity was undermined from moral ambiguities". 3 Yet nowhere in the poem is the juxtaposition between heroic triumph and human sorrow as pronounced as in the aftermath of the dragon battle. This...... middle of paper......wler through the darkness" is not a Grendel, but the violent nature of man. Works Cited Halsall, Guy, "Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West : An Introductory Survey,” in Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West, (Boydell Press, 2002). Heaney, Seamus, Beowulf: A Verse Translation. and. Daniel Donoghue, Norton Critical Edition edn (Norton, 2002). Leyerle, John, “Beowulf the Hero and the King.” Middle Aevum 34, n. 2 (1965).---, “The Interlaced Structure of Beowulf,” in Beowulf: A Verse Translation, ed. Daniel Donoghue.Murtagh, Alfred, “Beowulf Absent.” The heroic age, n. 11 (May 2008) http://www.heroicage.org/issues/11/ba1.php (accessed 4 February 2010). Niles, John D, Beowulf: The Poem and Its Tradition. (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1983). Whitelock, Dorothy, Beowulf's Audience. (Clarendon Press, 1951).