There are times when you want to be alone, and enjoy being alone. Other times, you can't stand being alone. You feel a void in your heart that should be filled. This is the difference between solitude and loneliness. One is the pleasure of being alone, and the other is the curse of feeling alone. Solitude is the joy of being alone. Sometimes you seek solitude to find privacy. Sometimes you need time to think by yourself. You choose to be alone. In The Seafarer, one of the poems in The Exeter Book, the speaker expresses his desire to stay alone at sea: "Flying solitary, screaming, exciting me/ to the open ocean, breaking oaths/ on the curve of a wave."(lines 62-64). On the other hand, there's loneliness. Loneliness feels like there is an invisible
I believe the overall message of Henry David Thoreau´s “Solitude” is to differentiate solitude and loneliness which are totally different. It is more of a state of mind than something real. People around by other people would feel more loneliness than people who are physically alone. For Thoreau being in solitude is the best way to discover your mind and spirituality and is the best way to know yourself.
“The Virtues of Isolation”, written by Brent Crane, states that under the right circumstances being alone can provide significant psychological help. The article stated that scientists often associate isolation with negative outcomes due to it having adverse effects on the minds of children. However, when it is voluntarily pursued, it can be shown to have significant befits—some would even say its therapeutic. That temporarily isolating yourself gives you a chance to take a step back and take a good look at yourself. It alleviates the stress on our everyday lives and lets us relax. That the difference between solitude as therapy and solitude as misery depends on the quality of self-reflection that a person experiences, and the ability to reintegrate into social groups when their ready.
Oftentimes, people confuse loneliness with the state of being alone. When looking at the overall big picture, it is easy to forget that loneliness is temporary. People are not alone because even back in primitive times, they bore a natural instinct to strive for companionship in order to survive. Human imagination creates companions in cases of extreme loneliness which contradicts the state of being alone. Due to societal and family standards, others in society make it practically impossible to be alone. Mankind often goes through life without realizing the overwhelming amount of human contact and support. People are never alone, they are just simply
The Seafarer, The Wanderer, and The Wife’s Lament all contains faith verses fate. The three poems are very similar and very different. The three poems ranging from a lonely man, to a lost soldier, to a wife’s bedrail. The medieval poems show hurt, confusion, and loneliness.
Loneliness and aloneness are two very different feelings; loneliness could be a lack, a feeling that something is missing, or a pain. But aloneness is being completely alone, a being without friends or people. The Great Gatsby by Scott F. Fitzgerald, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, and Cannery Row by John Steinbeck all connect to aloneness vs. loneliness. In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby himself feels loneliness although Nick Carraway feels all alone; in Cannery Row, Doc feels loneliness, while the Chinaman prefers to be alone; In Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman feels lonely trying to support his family but his sons seem never to appreciate his hard work.
The punishment for bad behavior in correctional institutions usually is that of solitary confinement, forcing the individual to not having any interactions between his peers. Although not causing any physical trauma to the inmate, the act of isolating them from everyone and everything proves to be the most feared method of punishment. A primarily social species, humans crave the interaction between themselves and others, relying on them for not only comfort and validation, but also to escape the fear that can be created from ones own mind. The film Pontypool uses such an idea, isolation the protagonists from direct knowledge of ongoings that threaten the world around them, depriving them of any sense of security and creating a far darker reality mentally than what could theoretically exist.
Loneliness: the quality of being unfrequented and remote; isolation. Isolation breaks a being down to a fundamental level. The deepest level of the spirit can be scratched, bruised, or even broken when it feels alone. Unwanted. Unloved. It is a proven need in life. Company. Companionship. These ideas, are necessities. The body, mind, and soul need to feel desired. If they feel alone then it causes unknown amounts of damage. It can change the actions, thoughts, and feelings of a being. When we are alone, we are broken.
Thoreau and McCandless both preferred to be alone in life as adults. Thoreau says that “I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.” (Thoreau 88). He found more happiness being alone than in the company of others. He felt like this because as stated, solidarity was better for him. In addition, he also discusses how being with even the best of people can lead to disappointment and weariness. Being with people he says is the same every day, meeting too frequently, and having good etiquette around others. He finds this tiresome and mentions how when being alone you don’t have to worry about manners. Thoreau learned that being alone is what he preferred because it leads to being happier.
Exile, is defined as a state of being barred from one’s native country. How could that even be possible; Being kicked out of a place of inhabitance. Many say that you’d have to do something unthinkable to have a punishment as grim as exile. During the lawless time of monsters and unruly Kings, the Anglo-Saxon era of poems make that all very practical. The creators of each poem discuss the personal endeavors of each exile and how they each come to their own acceptance, or not. “The seafarer”, “Wanderer”, and the “Wife’s Lament” use various literary devices to express the emotional toil, sorrow, and each theme of their exile.
However, there is another way the sentence can be interoperated. That is that Thoreau meant that he loves to be completely alone. This from alone means being completely alone and solitary from society and other humans as well as nature. By it being just him and his thoughts, he is truly able to understand who he is, and by doing that, “suck out the merit in life.” However that contradicts what he says later in the chapter. He states, “So also, owing to bodily and mental health and strength, we may be continually cheered by a like but more normal and natural society, and come to know that we are never alone.” If people are never truly alone, then how can Thoreau know what it is like to be alone? How he know that he loves to be alone, if he never truly is alone? Thoreau even says earlier in the chapter, “This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space.. Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way?... What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary?...” Is there a difference
In the medieval period, the Old English elegies use unnamed speakers that offer similar descriptions of devastated landscapes and immense personal hardships. However, where the unknown authors’ of the Old English elegies often present smilier descriptions and themes across their respective works, they do not present similar opinions on larger concerns like religion and the role of community. This is a concept that is interwoven into the framework of the Old English elegies “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer”. By comparing and contrasting these two works, this paper will argue that the unnamed narrators’ vivid descriptions of landscapes, circumstances surrounding their exile, and climactic perspectives on the earthly community function solely
The Seafarer by Burton Raffel was written during the Anglo-Saxon period where the Anglo-Saxon warriors lived to defend their King, like in the story Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. One of the warriors speaks about his challenges and begins saying that his story is not at all joyful. It is a story full of pain and suffering. The story paints a picture of what it means to be “dislocated”, “set out”, all by oneself and how badly it feels. “My feet were cast in icy bands, bound with frost,with frozen chains, and hardship groaned around my heart. Hunger tore at my sea-weary soul. No man sheltered on the quiet fairness of earth can feel how wretched I was”.(Raffel 1) The powerful imagery in this stanza sets the tone that the narrator is trying to
Thoreau opens "Solitude" with a melodious articulation of his pleasure in and sensitivity for nature. When he comes back to his home in the wake of strolling at night, he finds that guests have ceased by, which prompts him to remark both on his strict separation from others while at the lake and on the non-literal space between men. There is closeness in his association with nature, which gives adequate fraternity and blocks the likelihood of forlornness. The immensity of the universe puts the space between men in context. Thoreau brings up that on the off chance that we accomplish a more prominent closeness to nature and the heavenly, we won 't require physical nearness to others in the "station, the mail station, the tavern, the meeting-house, the school building" — places that offer the sort of organization that diverts and disperses. He remarks on man 's double nature as a physical element and as a scholarly observer inside his own particular body, which isolates a man from himself and adds encourage point of view to his separation from others. Also, a man is constantly alone when thinking and working. He finishes up the part by alluding to allegorical guests who speak to God and nature, to his own unity with nature, and to the wellbeing and imperativeness that nature gives.
To be lonely is an easy thing, being alone is another matter entirely. To understand this, first one must understand the difference between loneliness and being alone. To be alone means that your are not in the company of anyone else. You are one. But loneliness can happen anytime, anywhere. You can be lonely in a crowd, lonely with friends, lonely with family. You can even be lonely while with loved ones. For feeling lonely, is in essence a feeling of being alone. As thought you were one and you feel as though you will always be that way. Loneliness can be one of the most destructive feelings humans are capable of feeling. For loneliness can lead to depression, suicide, and even to raging out and hurting friends and/or
“The Seafarer” and "The Wanderer” are both poems that describe the hardships of the average Anglo-Saxon warrior. These stories show that life during the times of the Anglo-Saxons is not pleasant. In fact, it appears to be tough, fearful, and depressing. In “The Seafarer”, a man describes his horrid life on the sea, and in "The Wanderer”, a man tells his tale of being put into exile and losing all his fellow warriors and lord. Both men feel physical and emotional pain while going through their adventure. The seafarer claims that the sea itself is torturing him by saying “...the sea took [him], swept [him] back and forth in sorrow and fear and pain.” (2-3) The seafarer also explains that coldness is much more than just a feeling but a