The Seafarer, The Wanderer, And The Wife's Lament

Anglo-Saxon literature often expressed concepts of survival, battle, exile, male dominance in society, and loyalty to the lord. These aspects are strongly represented in both “The Wanderer” and “The Wife’s Lament”. Both elegies deliver themes of self-exile and the mourning of lost companions. Ideas of longing and alienation are present in these two Anglo-Saxon poems through use of figurative language, structure, point of view, comparison, and various other literary techniques.

In The Seafarer the man faces conflict of how he decided to live his life. Although he beat himself up over not having a family he still decided to get back on the ship, because to him the sea was what made him who he was today. In The Wanderer the soldier lost his identity due to the death of his lord. The soldier puts himself into exile to try to find a new lord who will be as loyal and rewarding as his last lord. In The Wife’s Lament the wife’s husband leaves her and she was put into exile by her husband’s family. After put into exile the wife ends up on the streets because she has no family there and no way to for the wife to get back to her family. The problems of all the poems are very different but all the problems affected the main characters.

The article Desperation at Sea by Rebecca Zissou tells us about people trying to escape war, poverty and natural disaster. First, on April 17, 2015 Ali 70 other migrants were migrating to Europe and start anew life but thousands of of people died trying to cross to Europe. Secondly, people were snuggled into plastic boats and abandon them to protect them selfs. Then, some passengers get to stay in Europe permanently. After that they need to find a job and often fight for it. Finally, this book was about escaping from their homeland.

When isolated from society, loneliness becomes a part of you. In the poems, The Wife’s Lament translated by Ann Stanford and The Seafarer translated by Burton Raffel, are two similar and different poems. The characters in these poems handle their exiles in different ways. The way the two characters reflect from their exile is based off Anglo-Saxon values and beliefs. These poems compare and contrast the exile between men and women.

The elegy “The Seafarer” is poem about a man who both loves and hates the sea. Elegiac tradition is one of many Anglo-Saxon elements express throughout the poem. An elegy being a mournful or melancholy poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead. In lines 80-83 the man exclaims “The days are gone when the kingdoms of earth flourished in glory; now there are no rulers, no emperors, no givers of gold, as there once were…..¨ The Seafarer expresses his mournful thoughts on how life used to be and will never be the same for him. Next, Kennings can be found often throughout the poem. Kennings are two or more words put together to serve as a symbol or

Images in the poem reflect the difficulties of the choice the traveler faces. The difficulty is shown in the passage "long I stood" (3)

The poem “The Wanderer” speaks of a man who has been exiled from his clan, and is now forced to roam the land alone. Separation from his fellow kinsmen and lord seems to be the worst fate imaginable. The man speaks of his great loss, remembering the time when he was happy with his liege,

Isolation from society can evoke a deep loneliness and self-reflection. The poem "The Wife's Lament" from the Exeter Book expresses the desolation of exile. The dominant theme is the contrast of a happy past and a bleak present of isolation. The anonymous author of "The Wife's Lament" uses setting, tone, and conflict to develop the theme of great loss. He/she augments a situation in which meditation on life's past joys is the only redemption in a life sentenced to confinement. “The Wife’s Lament” is an excellent example of nostalgia, resentment of the present, and hopelessness about the future.

Over the years, there have been many interpretations of who the speaker of The Wife’s Lament could be. These range from very interesting ideas to ones that seem a little rough around the edges. It is obvious that no sure answer can be found due to the fact that whoever wrote this poem is dead and that the answer will always be in speculation even if it is correct. Hopefully, at the end of this quest I will be slightly more enlightened as to who the true speaker may really be.

It’s easy to tell that the ocean is a mysterious and isolating place from all of the tragic tales we hear from sailors both real and fictional. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and an anonymous author’s “The Seafarer” are quite similar in that they both revolve around said tragic tales told by sailors. However, there seem to be more commonalities between their themes, tones, and messages rather than their seaward-bound settings. But before we can discuss these similar settings and deeper themes, we have to tackle their origins.

Unlike the wandering narrator, the seafaring narrator focuses his descriptions of the community that is present in nature. The seafarer the utterly rejects the notion that a “sheltering family / could bring consolation for his desolate soul” (25-26). This “sheltering family” (25) that the seafaring narrator alludes to in this line is the exact form of close-knit family that the narrator in “The Wanderer” laments for desperately. While the seafaring narrator offers striking similar descriptions of the landscape being “bound by ice” (9), he does not focus on these descriptions to dwell on the loss of an earthly community. Instead, the narrator in “The Seafarer” finds the landscape that he inhabits wonderfully abundant with natural — even spiritual — elements that are commonly associated with an earthly community. In the barren landscape, the seafaring narrator discovers “the wild swan’s song / sometimes served for music” (19-20) and “the curlew’s cry for the laugher of men” (20-21). These vibrant and vivid descriptions of the natural world that the narrator discovers in the harsh,

   Jean Rhys' complex text, Wide Sargasso Sea, came about as an attempt to re-invent an identity for Rochester's mad wife, Bertha Mason, in Jane Eyre, as Rhys felt that Bronte had totally misrepresented Creole women and the West Indies: 'why should she think Creole women are lunatics and all that? What a shame to make Rochester's wife, Bertha, the awful madwoman, and I immediately thought I'd write a story as it might really have been.' (Jean Rhys: the West Indian Novels, p144).  It is clear that Rhys wanted to reclaim a voice and a subjectivity for Bertha, the silenced Creole, and to subvert the assumptions made by the Victorian text.  She does so with startling results.

In the poems “The Wanderer” and “The Dream of the Rood,” anonymous authors give way to the idea that an Almighty God will solve every problem a person has by doing two things: 1) drawing upon the memories of a warrior who has lost everything near and dear to him due to war, and 2) entering the dream of a man who has been exiled and isolated. Each piece takes its reader through the trials and tribulations that one may not relate to in this era, yet the reader is still there alongside the character wanting them to find peace with their world and themselves. Initially, it is believed that the characters will overcome their hardships and achieve the happiness they seek. However, as the reader delves deeper into the character’s story, there is an overwhelming sense of incompleteness. What actually happens at the end of each piece is not written in stone - telling us the story is not whole - nor has a conclusion been reached. The intrapersonal thoughts being shared with the reader reveal the obstacles that keep an overall wholeness from occurring.

While “The Seafarer” and “The Wanderer” have similar key themes, there are also quite a few unique differences between one another. Both men struggle in their lives, but the seafarer chooses to live the kind of life he wants, yet the wanderer does not have a choice. The seafarer claims to continue travelling since the sea gives him an adrenaline rush and embraces the sea. He feels that it is his duty to travel the sea. The wanderer has no choice in experiencing what he is experiencing as he has been forced into exile, which makes others feel even worse for him. It says in line 9 of “The Wanderer” that “[being] lonely and wretched, [he] wailed [his] woe,” which very much implies that he currently hates his life and would never wish it upon anyone else. A second difference between the two poems are the poems’ individual opinions on time. The seafarer believes that life gets increasingly difficult as time goes on due to the loss of glory and honor overtime. The seafarer also believes this could be due to one being closer to eternal life with God as time goes on. The wanderer, however, has an opposite opinion. Towards the end of the poem, he looks optimistic on life and knows that life can and will always get better. He himself is the only

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.