Right from the myth of St. George & the Dragon, western minds are accustomed to view dragons as acquisitive, fearsome & bloodthirsty. Even Tolkien (Smaug in "The Hobbit") & Rowling (Harry Potter in the Triwizard Tournament), have depicted them as true to the stereotype, though ecological & environmental concerns had put forth the idea that all creatures are valuable in nature by the time they wrote.In this context, it is really a visionary approach taken by Kenneth Grahame (Wind in the Willows) who wrote about a peaceful, poetry loving dragon in his famous story "The Reluctant Dragon" much before protection of wildlife became trendy. In this story, St. George & the Dragon stage a mockfight, just to satisfy the unenlightened populace. (Call it "match-fixing for a good cause"!) At the end, the dragon, symbolically "wounded", is supposed to see the error of his ways & promising to mend them, joins the victory celebrations of St. George, who proclaims that all creatures are part of nature's scheme.
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