Intro to Beowulf

I was reading the intro to Beowulf and I started to think about my mother's ancestors ,whom I believe are Danish. So I thought that was pretty neat that The author of Beowulf was from that area of the world. Why is Beowulf a poem and not a short story? What exactly classifies a piece of literature as a poem or a short story? Well Beowulf is the longest poem; I want to know why? Tomorrow in class that will be the first question that I ask. If you haven't figured it out by now I always ask a ton of questions. Don't ask me why it's just me. Kinda scary actually, sometimes I think I scare others when I ask so many questions but I don't care because I'm acquiring knowledge. Something that I thought was kinda cool about the author of Beowulf is that he " made up his own words" they call it hapax legomens and they say it better in the introduction that the author was like " original word smith", that's cool. he must have written much to come up with his own words. Or maybe back then there were less words. I guess the same is true for today with making up words. they just wouldn't be very original but instead they would be parts of word that already exist. put together to make other words. It's not very original if you ask me, but it takes a certain skill. Just like some people are good at solving number puzzles. some people a good a making new words. Cryptography always fascinated me. Hey once again this poem has a christian under tone. What did i say there is no way of getting around the fact that God is in everything. Interesting stuff. that's my theme for this year. I've discovered that i will try to extract the christian theme out of each piece of literature that we read this semester. anyway, i really like that Grendel is like the descendant of Cain, now that's scary!! okay I have to admit, I saw the movie Beowulf and I thought it was horrible. More then that I hated it. That's just because they hyped it up so much at the box office and the film it's self was really B-A-D. Back to the Christan theme. I can't wait to start reading the poem so I can discover for myself what they really are. Are Hrothgar and Beowulf really monotheistic? or are they like everyone else in that time pagan who served many gods? Maybe they were but the author himself was monotheistic and he unconsciously wrote in God. which would prove my theory correct. that no matter what the theme of any piece of literature can be brought back to God.