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A Hero's Journey

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A dream vision is a genre of writing that takes place within a dream. Dreams can be inspiration for the dreamer, and encourage him or her to act on what was said in the dream. The Dream of the Rood is a poem that is part of this genre. There are three heros in the poem: Jesus, the cross, and the narrator. Each of these heroes help complete each others’ journeys while accomplishing their own journey. Heroes gain new lessons learned from their experiences and become wiser. The author uses personification, anaphora, and anagnorisis throughout the hero’s journey to convey the learning experience a hero gains to help future heroes.
The tree accepts its faith and becomes a part of Jesus’s journey. Jesus is at the end of His journey while …show more content…

The cross can feel Jesus’s support through the painful experience. The cross remembers being “ pierced … with dark nails” (46), “drenched with blood” (48), and being “drenched with sorrow” (59). The poem uses prosopeia, a type of personification that gives human qualities to an object, to show the hardships of the cross. The cross could feel the nails being driven into it. Readers get a better understanding of what the cross endures. These strong words describes pain better than saying a nail was put in a cross. The author also uses anaphora, the repetition of the first word in a sentence. Drenched is repeated to emphasize the horrors the cross experiences. The cross perseveres through the painful …show more content…

The narrator’s call to adventure is the dream itself. He could have woken up from the dream but he stays asleep to find out more information. The cross:
“urge[s] you [narrator], beloved man, that you [narrator] tell men about this vision: reveal with words that it is the tree of glory on which almighty God suffered for mankind’s many sins” (95-99)
As a mentor the cross is helping the narrator by telling its experience. The experience helps shape the narrator's mind-set when choosing whether or not to accept the journey.
The narrator accepts the journey because he believes what he has seen in this vision. He decides to changes in ways and become holier because before the vision he said he was “stained with sins,/ [and] wounded with guilts” (13-14). After the narrator has the vision, he begins to pray to the cross and to God for he truly believes. He has changed and:
“hope[s]
each day for when the Lord’s cross,
That I looked at here on earth
Will fetch me from this transitory life,
And then bring me where there is great

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