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Christianity In The Seafarer

Decent Essays

Weekly Writing Assignment #3 A man chosen as a seafarer endures alone in a blue abyss and survives through the harsh winds and hostile territory alone, with none to confide his suffering to other than himself, and virtually no reasons to continue the sufferation known as life, yet, despite the odds, he lives on, and tells his suffering in a poem known as “The Seafarer”. In “The Seafarer”, the author of the poem releases his long held suffering about his prolonged journey in the sea. While the poem explains his sufferings, the poem also reveals why he endured anguish, and lived on, even though the afterlife tempted him. Besides expressing his reasons to live, more importantly, the poem narrates the huge impacts of Christianity on him. In the …show more content…

As for the narrator in “The Seafarer”, Christianity and the belief of an afterlife saves him from ending his own life prior to believing in a place much better than his present and the endorsement of “The Measurer” if he lives on. Besides Christianity being a huge impact in this poem, the author also uses many of the techniques listed by Foster such as using season and weather to symbolize his harsh conditions. As stated by Foster, “seasons have stood for the same set of meanings,” winter, the time of “Death and rebirth, growth and harvest and death”(189-190). In “The Seafarer, the speaker clearly uses the winter weather to show his demise, and also his will of death. Yet besides his suffering, the winter also brought his growth. In that winter time, he realized his goal of life, to repay the debt he owed to his creator. Despite winter conditions, the “hail [that] fell to the ground” also symbolized as a realization as shown by Foster “It’s more than just rain or snow”, this realization revelates in the form of being enlightened religiously (69). Besides hail symbolizing a realization, the entire seafaring trip also exemplifies an important concept, Baptism, or a “rising from the dead”(169). As the speaker started on, his present was no more than a “dead life,” yet, later on, the speaker seems to “[rise] from the dead” as he realizes his demise, after the entire trip out to the sea, he returns and realizes that he had been dead all along, and that “life pertains to the love of the Lord, hope in heaven,” not “[performing] the greatest glories”(84,

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