Artistic Freedom vs.. Artistic Responsibility

Thesis Statement: Writers have the freedom to change whatever they want about a piece of literature but also have the responsibility of not changing it to a point where it is unrecognizable.

            Artistic freedom allows the writer to modernize an old piece of literature and add their own personal ideas. An example of this is in Beowulf. Beowulf is an old poem that can be very boring for modern day civilization. Because of this, Beowulf was made into a movie. The movie only made small changes t the old poem. One example in Beowulf is that in the poem it’s just a random dragon that attacks the town. But in the movie the dragon is actually Beowulf’s son. Another example in Beowulf is that in the poem Beowulf waits several years before becoming king. But in the movie Beowulf becomes king immediately. These are small changes and even though they play an important role in the new story its still mainly the original story.

Artistic responsibility means that the writer should keep main parts of the story like the original text. If you change too much then you are messing up the original work. Beowulf did not do this. Beowulf made small changes that helps to capture modern day societies attention and still told the overall story.