Beowulf Freewrite

“But let us return to the dragon.”
 When Tolkien was writing this, people were mainly focused on the historical aspects of Beowulf
from the items in it to the places. But that's not really what Beowulf is about.

For anyone who has read the poem, the monsters in it are numerous and each is their own thing.
It seems almost impossible now to read this poem and not focus on the monsters.
When we return to the dragon, we are returning to the roots of the story.
The dragon is a common theme we see today, both in current works and in historical works,
as seen here. In a way it is like coming back to the heart of the story, not getting
too focused on minor details but rather seeing what the author wants us to see. 

What is also interesting about this is that Tolkien returns to the dragon a lot in his stories.
Smaug is a very large part of the hobbit, and the whole story is, in a way, about returning to the dragon,
or at least the place which the dragon resides.
As we move onto LotR, there is a significant lack of dragons. The main villain is not a dragon,
but rather an evil deity which is then defeated. But in Tolkien’s extended lore, he does return to the idea
of the dragon. While I am not able to list any names off the top of my head, there are several dragons in
Middle Earth and each play different roles. So while there may not be dragons everywhere, Tolkien
still takes the idea of “let us return to the dragon” seriously, as shown in his works. 

(edit: will fix format more, sorry all)