The Old Came Out With 11 Men

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The book is about a man who can beat up monsters and then all of a sudden he's old, and he's still strong but he's not what he used to be. The best part of the whole book is with laughs saying, you know, basically how dare you like where the armor he gave you as you walk away from this fight he's going to die in. And I'm hoping to make this equal just to have a kid yell that at some other kid have dare you leave when it got most difficult.

Tolkien read it as a tale about mortality. The poet David Whyte said it was a metaphor for the psychological demons deep in our minds. And that, insists the cartoonist and writer Zach Weinersmith, is precisely Beowulf's appeal: Its richness opens the door to endless interpretation. Listen as the author of Bea Wolf, a graphic novel for children based on the Old English poem, speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about poetry in general, Beowulf in particular, whether we should require students to memorize poems, and the value of stories for children even without a moral lesson.