What Is A Hero's Journey

As Wendy Martin says “the poem leaves the reader with painful impression of a woman in her mid-fifties, who having lost her domestic comforts is left to struggle with despair. Although her loss is mitigated by the promise of the greater rewards of heaven, the experience is deeply tragic.” (75)

An enormous wave crashes into your boat nearly tipping it. The howling wind tosses the boat from side to side. Lightning strikes the stern sending you into darkness. The next morning you wake up to a calm, quiet sea ready for smooth sailing. Somedays the water is perfectly still making for easy travel, yet other days you have to endure a restless, unforgiving sea. This is how the road of life is perceived. The seas my father has conquered has taught me that life isn’t always smooth sailing.

“Great captain a fair wind and the honey lights of home are all you seek. But anguish lies ahead; the god who thunders on the land prepares it, not to be shaken from your track, implacable, in rancor for the son whose eye you blinded. … Though you survive alone bereft of all companions, lost for years, under strange sail shall you come home, to find your own house filled with trouble: insolent men eating your livestock as they court your lady. Aye, you shall make those men atone in blood! … Then a seaborne death soft as this hand of mist will come

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 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.

First of all, in “The Seafarer” the writer discusses the internal conflicts he is having among the waves of the sea. Even though this self-chosen exile causes this man pain and sorrow, peace is not a common entity for him while on land. “The time for journeys would come and my soul/ called me eagerly out, sent me over/ the horizon, seeking foreigners’ homes.” (lines 36-38). The gallant mortal does not doubt that there is no fear among his heart, but his longing for the tides is far too strong to be confined to the dry, lifeless land. His experiences only bring him back to where he feels at home the most - the sea. “But there isn’t a man on earth so proud,/…/he feels no fear as the sails unfurl/…/only the ocean’s heave; But longing wraps itself around him.” (lines 39-47). The way he shows his fearful arrogance is an example again of his internal conflict.

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

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.

In the three poems “The Wife’s Lament”, “The Wanderer”, and “The Seafarer” from The Exeter Book, it’s clear that travel and exile are recurring and important themes. Is there a possibility that these themes and elements have a significance that goes above and beyond their literal meaning? Though they may experience it differently, all three of the speakers from these poems in The Exeter Book deal with the great pain of exile, or being driven out, resulting in the need or desire for travel. This takes place due to the fact exile was one of the most tragic fates that an anglo-saxon man or woman could endure at the time. It makes sense that these themes would play a huge part in these poems because during this time period, exile was the

The harshness of live out at sea compared to on land reflects the stress The Seafarer faces in trying to find oneself, whereas life on land can be associated with enclosure which in turn brings comfort compared to life on the sea, which inflicts discomfort due to the unpredictability of nature. Waller (27-56) writes about how The Wanderer is strongly focused on the mind as a traumatic place due to the exile it recounts. Waller suggests that the mind leaves the body in The Seafarer. This reinforces the idea of the sea as a metaphor for the mind, as it moves away from the body causing chaos and destruction as one is disconnected. He suggests how during the Anglo Saxon period poems uses a wide range of vocabulary as a metaphor for the mind, how the mind was a place to store unhappy thoughts, and also refers to lines of the poem where the speaker “expresses a strong desire to keep his thoughts to himself as he struggles with the miserable condition of exile” (Waller, 30), thus suggests the mind can be associated with physical attachment. Thus the journey through the sea is an example of

[and] so graced by God”. The speaker clearly uses alliteration to express his feelings towards his journey. He also establishes to the reader that he is influenced by a religious motive. His ideas may have contributed to the religious values the Anglo- Saxons believed in: Pagan, and Christian. The man also describes his experience on sea as he , “drifting [drifted] through winter on an ice cold sea, whirled in sorrow, alone in a world blown clear of love, hung with icicles. Through the use of imagery we can understand the isolated setting of the ocean, and how his loneliness led to a deepening sadness. Overall, “The Seafarer” influenced today’s literature through the use of various literary devices. The man’s personal feelings and ideas about

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,

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 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

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.