The Seafarer The Wife's Lament And The Wanderer

Essentially a monologue set within a frame, this poem creates two personae. The anonymous author gives a brief introduction and conclusion. The Wanderer, an aging warrior, who roams the world seeking shelter and aid. The Wanderer’s monologue divides into two distinct parts, the first being a lament for his exile and the loss of kin, friends, home, and the generosity of his king. In nature, he finds absolutely no comfort, for he has set sail on the winter stricken sea. Poignantly, the speaker dreams that he is among his companions, and embracing his king, only to awaken facing the gray, winter sea, and snowfall mingled with hail.

In “The Wanderer” there is a theme of the inevitably of death and deaths appearance all around us. The wanderer’s grievance of the death he has faced is seen through the authors' use of ubi sunt:

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.

Alliteration is defined as the repetition of initial consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words or syllables. It is a literary device that authors use to bring attention to certain important ideas or concepts in stories. Alliterations allow the reader to bring their senses together to hear and feel what they are reading by bring in sounds of the world around us into literate. This helps the reader visualize the story, therefore helping the reader to remember it. It is used in many stories as a way to hide metaphors and other subliminal messages. For example, alliterations with the 's' being the prominent sound could be visualized as a snake slithering, making a character have a slyness about him. Specifically in Anglo-Saxon literature, alliteration is significant because it is how authors organized their poems or stories, includes repetition which aids memorization, and emphasizes important parts of the text that the author wants the audience to know. Alliteration in important in both “The Wanderer” and “The Wife’s Lament” because it helps evoke certain emotions and feelings by using the different functions of alliterative language.

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.

Hence “banishèd” is banished from the world, and world’s exile is death. Then “banishèd,” is death mistermed. Calling death “banishment,” Thou cutt’st my head off with a golden ax and smilest upon the stroke that murders me. ”(III,iii). Romeo believes that being banished from Verona is the same thing as death.

Exile is something that most people think is scary. It is seen as something that is a punishment

The book, A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park shows us that perseverance is the key to success and not to give up.

In the book, A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park, Salva realizes that perseverance is key when facing life’s challenges.

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,

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”, an elegy from the Exeter Book Elegies, discusses the idea that the Anglo-Saxon way of life is fleeting, and the only way to overcome this is living a life free of sin. The Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf continuously digresses into stories whose purpose is to teach the main character how to behave in order to become a heroic figure. In the excerpt from first work mentioned, the speaker believes that soon the “pomp” and “lordly fame” associated with the warrior culture of the Anglo-Saxon world will be a thing of the past (82, 85). Conversely, in the Beowulf excerpt, which tells the story of the bad King Heremod, the attitude of the speaker is that warrior culture is a central part of life. The speaker of “The Seafarer” excerpt explains the benefits of being a man who is “humble” and “strong minded” (108, 109). On a similar note, the speaker of the Beowulf excerpt condemns those who are selfish “he gives no golden rings” and “angry” (1749). Both the poem and the epic discuss the ideal way that a man should conduct himself. The importance of these lessons in “The Seafarer” is to live an everlasting life in heaven while in Beowulf the reason is to gain glory on earth and be remembered.

Throughout the history of British Literature, there have always been the themes of loneliness, torment or exile. Many times authors speak from their experiences and at times those experiences have to do with misery and discomfort with their lifestyles. In the Renaissance age, times were not always happy and people chose to pass on stories generation to generation to reveal their feelings and experiences. Poems made a great impact in easing the pain. In the poems, "The Seafarer" and "The Wanderer", the themes of loneliness and exile exist throughout both of the poems. The unknown authors portray the two themes through detail and emotion.

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.