Beowulf: The Desolation of Smaug

As I opened Beowulf today, ready for another tale of macho monster-slaying, I found myself feeling a sense of deja vu. Something about this felt incredibly familiar to me. As I got to the part where the dragon lays waste to the countryside, I finally realized why on Earth I felt like I'd seen this before- it reminds me of The Hobbit. Specifically, the three films that that one book spawned.

The unnamed dragon is said to have "guarded his hoard in the high heaths and the steep stone barrows; the path below lay unknown to men. Some sort of man went inside there, found his way to the heathen hoard - his hand ... inlaid with jewels." (Pg. 187, lines 2212-2217) What, exactly, does this remind me of...?

It sounds exactly like the Lonely Mountain, home of the dragon Smaug (and his treasure hoard) in The Hobbit, if you ask me. But the comparisons didn't end there- the tale goes on to say that "He (the thief) got no profit there, though he (the dragon) had been trapped in his sleep by a thief's trickery: the whole nation knew, and all the people around them, that he was enraged." (Pg. 187, lines 2217-2220) These lines immediately bring to mind Bilbo's encounter with Smaug:

At first, when Bilbo enters the dungeon, Smaug is asleep beneath his massive treasure hoard, but the sound of Bilbo moving around (and perhaps some inconvenient timing as well) awakens the dragon before too long. The dragon proceeds to interrogate and toy with the Hobbit, calling him a 'thief', suspecting (correctly, to an extent) that he had entered the Lonely Mountain to steal his treasure. Although the events don't play out quite exactly the same in Beowulf (the thief escapes and doesn't awaken the dragon) the parallels are clearly evident.

After these events, the enraged dragon razes the countryside as vengeance for the theft of his treasure- "Then that strange visitor began to spew flames and burn the bright courts; his burning gleams struck horror in men. That hostile flier would leave nothing alive. The worm's warfare was widely seen, his ferocious hostility, near and far, how the destroyer hated and harmed the Geatish people, then hastened to his hoard, his dark and hidden hall, before the break of day. He had surrounded the people of that region with fire, flames and cinders..." (Pg. 193, lines 2312-2322) As I mentioned previously, this was the point where I realized the similarities between Beowulf and The Hobbit, because the dragons vengeance reminded me of the beginning of the third film in the trilogy (The Battle of the Five Armies)...

...In which an enraged Smaug rampages and lays waste to Esgaroth, the Lake-town, setting it ablaze and forcing its people to flee.

I know we brought up in class at one point that some group in Lord of the Rings speaks Old English, and after having read through this and seen these parallels, it seems to me that Tolkien was clearly very heavily influenced by Beowulf... Or, honestly, maybe Hollywood was. I know these movies took a lot of creative liberty with stuff that didn't happen in the book, so maybe events didn't play out exactly like this in the novel. (I can't recall. It's been ages since I actually read The Hobbit.) Either way though, I'd like to think we can all agree that Tolkien had some sort of inspiration from Beowulf.