The Duty of the Losers

When the vomiting finally stopped, I slid down in the stall with my arms wrapped around my midsection, feeling as though I had been hit in the stomach with a boulder of ice. I had never experienced actual internal bleeding, but I had the sensation that my blood had frozen and was seeping out from my traumatized gut to course down through my limbs, numbness creeping into my hands and feet. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears like an ominous drum. All I wanted was to curl up into a ball and let the oblivion of sleep take away the dreaded sensations that were coursing through me.

What had happened to put me in this state? I had lost a football game. I was a freshman in high school, and we had ended our season with a 21-0 drubbing at the hands of our most bitter rival. With no practice or game coming up to vent those feelings, I would be forced to live with them for 10 or so months until the next season started. I had experienced defeat before, but never like that–so total, so all encompassing. That day, I learned what it felt like to be a loser.

At least that was how my teenage brain processed the experience at the time. This morning, just before sitting down to write this, I checked the score of the football game my college alma mater had played the night before, having been unable to watch it in real time. My team had lost 38-35, after having led in the game until the final minute. For a brief moment, I felt the echo of that seeping, dreaded loser’s elixir deep in my core, but unlike when I was a high schooler, it faded in seconds, as I have learned to better conceptualize the “loser’s experience” and now know the duties of the loser.

We have all felt like “losers” or have experienced loss or defeat in one way or another during the tumultuous, rollercoaster lives we lead. Our culture constantly works to impress upon us the philosophy that winning is the only option, that second place is the “first loser,” that if we do lose we must react with anger and defiance, shifting blame and denying that we bear any responsibility for the outcome of the experience. This is a toxic perspective.

Defeat is inevitable if you choose to engage with life in any way at all. No loss or defeat you suffer or are in some way affiliated with changes what is asked or obligated of you; you need to be good, you need to be a person of virtue. No matter what happens in low-stakes competitions or in higher-stakes life scenarios, our duty as active participants in either remains the same. How does the defeat you have suffered or been associated with (meaning that you have some tangential, vested interest in the outcome, such as a fan might have) stop you from responding to that outcome with courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom? It just might be that the defeat presents you with an immediate and critical opportunity to put those virtues into action. Our job, as it has always been, is to be good, wise people who stand up for what is right and resist what is evil and wrong. Nothing can exempt us from that duty or prevent us from performing it. The obligation to act remains. We can only truly control one thing, and that is how we choose to respond to the defeats we will inevitably face.

As a teacher of literature, I work to draw life inspirations from great thinkers and writers of the past and pass those lessons on to the next generation as best I can. One of the great stories of the past that offers a perspective as to how to deal with defeat or loss is Beowulf, the oldest known work of literature from England. In the story, young Beowulf, a prince from Geatland in Scandinavia, hears that King Hrothgar of Denmark is in trouble. It seems a monster named Grendel, living in the swamps in the wilderness beyond, has been attacking Herot, the king’s mead hall, and killing any inhabitants of the hall who happen to be unfortunate enough to be inside when Grendel breaks in. The creature only attacks at night, and if someone is sleeping in the hall (the king himself seems exempt from Grendel’s wrath, as his “holy” position as king somehow protects him). This has been going on for ten years, and no visitors dare risk visiting the king, who endures this in misery.

Seeing an opportunity for glory, the young Geatish prince sets sail with a ship load of warriors in an effort to rid Hrothgar of the menace plaguing him and his people. Beowulf arrives in Denmark, promising to kill Grendel if the creature dares to attack again, and he and his crew bed down in Herot preparing to defend the hall should Grendel appear–and appear he does. The monster manages to kill two of Beowulf’s crew, but then he makes the mistake of reaching out for Beowulf himself, who sits up, grabs the creature by the wrists, and proceeds to physically throw him around the hall (Beowulf opted not to use a sword against the monster, reasoning that since Grendel uses only his bare hands when he attacks, to face the monster with a weapon would give him an unfair and dishonorable advantage–the playing field must be even if glory is to be won). The rest of Beowulf’s crew have no such qualms about using their weapons, striking at the monster with their own swords as Beowulf struggles with him, all to no avail. The weapons glance off the creature’s hide, not leaving a scratch.

The sheer force of the battle between the two champions nearly causes the walls of Herot to collapse. Eventually, Beowulf manages to rip the creature’s arm from its body, and Grendel, defeated for the first time in his miserable existence, limps back to the swamp. Beowulf nails the arm above the entrance to Herot as a warning to any other monsters who would dare to attack Hrothgar’s hall, at least while Beowulf is there and has any say in the matter.

The next night, another attacker, Grendel’s mother, seeks revenge. She kills one of Beowulf’s friends, steals her son’s arm back, and retreats to the swamp. Beowulf himself was sleeping in guest quarters at the time, and was not present to repel her attack. However, the new challenge far from daunts him. He follows her trail to the swamp of her origin and dives in, sinking through the mire (for hours, the text tells us) until he comes to the mother’s underwater lair. A second battle ensues, and Beowulf defeats her, bringing the head of Grendel back as a trophy. He tosses it carelessly to the shore, and it takes many members of Beowulf’s crew just to lift it and carry it back to the hall in triumph.

Beowulf is rewarded for his heroism, and returns home to Geatland, where he is eventually named king in his own right. Decades pass, and his reputation grows. Then, in the twilight of his reign, a new threat emerges to endanger his people. A dragon, taking revenge for the theft of a piece of treasure from its hoard of gold, takes to the skies over Geatland and begins destroying Beowulf’s kingdom. Once more, the famed king sallies forth to take on this new threat, knowing that he just might not win this time; he is old, and the odds against him are great. He instructs his people how to proceed should the powers of wyrd, or fate, deny him victory and claim his life. Despite the danger, he descends into the dragon’s lair and engages it in battle. He actually manages to kill the creature, but not without suffering a mortal injury himself. When Beowulf dies, his countrymen erect a lighthouse on a promontory as a memorial to him, but the tone at the poem’s end is a grave one, as his people know that the enemies around them will be coming once they learn of Beowulf’s death, sensing weakness. As many other Anglo-Saxon poems do, it offers a seemingly bleak perspective on the future, not the hopeful one modern audiences might anticipate. However, this feeling is a matter of perspective.

J.R.R. Tolkien is one of history’s greatest Beowulf scholars, and one can see many echoes of Beowulf in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the works for which Tolkien is best known. The author of Beowulf is unknown to us; the work has been translated by scholars such as Burton Raffel, Seamus Heaney, and even Tolkien himself, but we know little about the original writer. There are, however, things we can infer. In his lecture/essay “The Monsters and the Critics,” Tolkien works to illustrate how so many literary critics of his time get Beowulf all wrong, among other observations. Tolkien shares with us that the anonymous author of Beowulf illustrated a traditional Northern/Scandinavian theme that demonstrates the paradox of defeat being both inevitable yet unacknowledged. When Beowulf sets out to do battle with the dragon, he knows defeat is almost a guarantee, but that is not something capable of daunting him or making him reconsider his duty. Heroes like Beowulf, Tolkien tells us, live in little circles of light defended by mortal hands with courage as their primary weapon; they go forward into the battle with the dark and its offspring (such as Grendel–hate personified) which ends for all of them, even the greatest of champions, in defeat.

The author of Beowulf himself knew that, even in his own tumultuous, strife-ridden world of Anglo-Saxon England, the light was encircled by the dark. The author valued the light passionately, but we as humans tend to sometimes forget about the encroaching darkness and the ultimate victory it will enjoy over us–our eventual deaths. Beowulf’s author did not forget this; he lived on a besieged, metaphorical island of light, surrounded by an ocean of darkness–but he loved the island all the more because of it.

Humans, not only as individuals but as a whole, and all of our works, shall die. As the Beowulf poet looks back into the past, he sees that all humankind as humankind can accomplish ultimately ends in night. This observation made me think of the Percy Shelley poem “Ozymandias.” In the poem, a traveler in an ancient wasteland comes across the shattered visage of an ancient king carved from stone and laying in the sand. An inscription on a pedestal near the head reads: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!” The traveler then looks around him, and the poem’s narrator reacts to that inscription: “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay/Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare/The lone and level sands stretch far away” (Shelley, lines 10-14). It seems that despite the claims that “the mighty should look on his works and despair” of ever eclipsing them, the great king fell, as we all will, when facing time and mortality. Nevertheless, despite the inevitability of death and defeat, the poet of Beowulf maintained an obstinate belief in the value of the doomed effort, and that’s what we can take away from the Beowulf story. No matter if we are outnumbered or overpowered, no matter if we are losing energy and hope, we must carry on the fight against the darkness in whatever way remains open to us while we are able, as that is our duty.

J.R.R. Tolkien was inspired by that Northern mindset and expressed similar themes in his own works. Young Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings is overwhelmed by the task set before him to travel deep into the heart of the enemy’s kingdom to destroy the Ring of Power, a quest that is deemed all but impossible by many around him. He expresses his lack of hope to Gandalf the wizard: “I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.”

Gandalf responds with the perspective we must all work to apply to our situations when all seems lost or when the pain of the defeat is most acute: “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you.” Yes. That. When our efforts in any endeavor end in defeat, we must get up off the mat and re-engage in the struggle. That is the only option open to us. It might take some time, and what that re-engagement looks like may be different from person to person, but re-engage we must. Look, you either win or you learn. If you gave the effort everything you had and still fell short, hold your head up knowing that you could not have done any better at that time with the knowledge, experience, and resources you had. Examine what happened. Learn from the forces that defeated you and from any mistakes you might have made, and apply those lessons to future efforts. You only really lose when you quit–and that simply isn’t an option while we live.

In The Return of the King, also from Tolkien, the forces of Rohan, assembled by King Theoden, begin to lose hope. They have not been able to assemble an army of sufficient size to stand any chance against the forces of Sauron from Mordor. One of Theoden’s most stalwart captains acknowledges this fact in open council: “Too few have come. We cannot defeat the forces of Mordor.”

Theoden steps forward, and shakes his head. “No. We cannot. But we will meet them in battle nonetheless,” he says. There it is; defeat inevitable but unacknowledged. They will fight for what is right despite the odds, as the alternative is unconscionable. For Theoden and his army, death with honor is preferable to allowing the darkness to advance unchallenged.

A final example, from the film version of “The Two Towers,” inspired by Tolkien’s novel, has Samwise Gamgee explaining to Frodo what they have left to hold onto despite how dark and bleak things look:

It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you… that meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. They kept going because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: “What are we holding onto Sam?”

Samwise: “That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.” (tolkiengateway.net)

Samwise understands the value of our literature and stories and the lessons they have to share with us. The heroes of any story ever told could have quit when things grew unbearably difficult for them, when the darkness closed in all around. The difference was that they didn’t do so. They knew their duty to the light. We must learn from those examples and not allow the darkness to overwhelm us to the point of abandoning the cause.

Life will continue to throw setbacks and defeats our way. The omnipresent darkness relentlessly presses in around us, and it will seem like all we have are ever-shrinking candles capable of pushing a little of that darkness back for just as long as they can sustain their light. We have to figure out ways to keep that flame alive; the darkness is relentless, ever present, patient, and is right there waiting for when the despair sinks in to try and extinguish the flame forever.

Yes, battles will be lost. Yes, it will be hard to get up the next day and face the smug face of the darkness as it gloats over you and dares you to try and hold your candle up again. But what choice do you have? Call on your creativity, your allies, eat well, get enough sleep, exercise, and always remember that the only thing to decide each day is what to do with the time that is given to you–just don’t you quit. You have a duty as a loser not to.

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Works Cited:
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “Ozymandias.” The Poetry Foundation, 2024, https://www.poetryfoundation.org. Accessed November 17, 2024.
“The Tales that Really Mattered,” https://tolkiengateway.net. Accessed November

17, 2024.