Themes In The Seafarer And Other Anglo-Saxton Lyric Poetry

The son had loved his father dearly but does not favor his way of life. His interest in school greatly outweighed his interest or desire to work on ‘The Boat’. He still had a love for the sea and in some way felt like he should carry out his family’s tradition. After his uncle had accepted a new job he took his position on the boat and promised his father that we would continue to sail with him for as long as he lived, and when his father passed despite the desires of his mother he followed his dreams and pursued education and all of its wonders. After living his life he finds himself longing for the sea again and isn’t so satisfied with his life.

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.

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 Mariner’s lifelong penance is to relay his story and message throughout the lands to the various individuals he holds a calling towards. The Mariner can only relieve his frequents bouts of extreme agony and guilt from his past by narrating his story and lesson to others, bidding them not to make the same mistake he did. Initially, the listener is reluctant to hear the Mariner’s tale, eager to get to the wedding that is about to begin. However, the listener is somehow drawn to the Mariner and yields to his tale. He becomes enchanted, and by the tale’s end, the listener is left, shocked, speechless, and in awe. He gains a new perspective of the world, and the poem ends with the words, “He [the listener] went like one that hath been stunned / And is of sense forlorn; / A sadder and a wiser man, / He rose the morrow morn.”

The comitatus “stressed the loyalty of a thane to his chieftain and treated exile and outlawry as the most tragic lots that could befall one. This secular sense of loss is keen in The Wanderer.”6 Not only is the loss of a lord evident in “The Wanderer,” but in “The Seafarer” and “The Wife’s Lament” as well.

Life standed on the sea is very grueling and risky. Only a few are able to face the

One main message in “The Seafarer” translated by Burton Raffel, is exile. Exile plays a big role in all three stories by mainly in “The Seafarer” because the sailor is always talking about

The Seafarer is a elegy-style poem that depicts the suffering and the hardships of an unnamed traveler of the sea. It is notably similar to the poem from the previous lesson , The Wanderer, in the sense that most of the poem consists of the narrator sharing his misfortunes with the readers. The poem takes readers on a mental walk-through of the narrator´s "Psychological Journey" that begins with him expressing his sorrow and concludes with his realization that, despite the hardships he endures in his life at sea, he should live in gratitude to God for all that He has done. The narrator´s "Psychological Journey" undergoes several different seasons. These seasons are both emotional and literal as the climate briefly changes from Winter to Spring halfway through the poem.

In the beginning of this piece of literature the narrator describes how the sea “took me, swept me back and forth in sorrow and pain” (The Seafarer 2/3). He was abroad and alone, he felt abandoned. Grieving he experienced hardships from being abandoned. “Alone in a world blown clear of love” (The Seafarer 16). This displays that this abandonment has caused him to to be distant from love, and to lose interest in love.

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.

The speaker in “The Seafarer” seems to be more accepting of Christian beliefs compared to other poems written around that time. However, throughout the poem, there were numerous instances where the speaker also mentioned Fate, which reveals how torn people were on the subject. The beginning of the poem shows how the main character is desperate to get back to the sea. However, in the second part of the poem, the poem abruptly changes direction and begins to focus on the Christian faith. The speaker sounds like he is preaching a sermon because he is encouraging people to obey the Lord. He mentions how wealth makes no difference once one is in heaven, and he makes it seem like he is a devoted Christian. However, the speaker then brings up the concept of Fate numerous times throughout the poem. “‘The poem is a direct reflection of the speaker’s own uncertainty and conflict’” (Klees 1). The speaker seems to understand the Christian religion because he makes many references to it throughout the poem and makes connections to the actual story. However, there were many instances where the main character expressed beliefs other than Christian. Throughout the story, the main character intertwines the beliefs of Christians with the Pagan beliefs. The speaker mixes up the concept of Fate with the Christian idea of free will. This shows how the Anglo-Saxons struggled trying to escape their former

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,

The speaker of “The Seafarer” believes that soon the warrior way of life will no longer be

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

“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