The Wandered and The Themes of Internal Loneliness in The Battle with The Forces of Nature

At first interpretation, The Wanderer lends itself to a depressing and lamenting read from the hands of the poet who wrote the words of a poor and lonely voyager battling against his internal struggle of loneliness and the external force of nature. This wanderer longs for the company he held before battle and death took them away. He has lost his lord and fellow-warriors, the lively mead-halls, and the showers of feasts and treasures. This social circle is no more, leaving the wanderer alone to contemplate the aspects of sadness, nobility, and wisdom. The Wanderer is composed of two voices: the narrator and the wanderer. The poet, however, writes both. The poet’s characterization of the wanderer allows readers to experience symptoms of Anglo-Saxon depression on paper. However, when read again (and a few more times after that), a hint of humor can be found in the harsh words of the wanderer and the narration of the poet. The Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons began in 597, and this poem is a didactic response to the paganism previously common. In this paper, I will, first, establish the wanderer as a pagan and, following, explore how the unconscious humor in the poet’s words presents a Christian remedy for the pre-Christian world of paganism.

…Fate is firmly set

This is a blatant contradiction between Christian and non-Christian ideas. Longing for the mercy of God is strictly Christian, while believing in an inexorable fate is pagan. Fatalism assumes that no circumstance that a human face is random, but predetermined by either the natural or supernatural. God is considered to be the being that regulates the outcome of nature. Oppositely, the Holy Scripture of the Bible reads that God created man with the responsibility of free will and its consequences. With the decision to insist the wanderer’s trust in fate, the poet is distancing the wanderer from Christianity.

No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

A good Christian must denounce the earthly vices and place trust solely in the Lord, for nothing will accompany him to the grave except his good deeds. The wanderer’s obsession for worldly possession and virtues, such as fellowship and riches, place him into a world resembling Everyman. Not once in the poem does the wanderer mention a personal accomplishment. Instead, his fixation lies in his sorrows and the happy time from his past. When the wanderer sleeps, he dreams of his lord and the gifts he once received. The wanderer, hopeless, wishes for the “fruits of the earth,” the company of his fellow-warriors, and riches. Additionally, he laments on his loneliness, instead of looking to God, in lines 29 to 31, when he says, “One acquainted with pain understands how cruel a traveling companion sorrow is for someone with few friends at his side.” Once again, the wanderer disregards basic Christian ideals in his mournful soliloquy.

Now that I have addressed the non-Christianity of the wanderer, I will turn attention to the satirizing techniques used by the poet. Satire relies on the use of irony, exaggeration, and caricature. And, the poet employs each of these when characterizing the wanderer. Beginning with line 65, the wanderer considers the characteristics of a “wise man.”

…A wise man must be patient,not too hot of heart nor hasty of speech,…not too greedy,and never eager to commit until he can be sure.

The wanderer insists that “an excellent virtue is to lock tight, the treasure chest, within one’s heart, howsoever he may think.” Why, then, does he speak his laments and hardships aloud? His words lie in quotation marks, in the poet’s attempt to distance the narration from the spoken word and to expose the disagreement between the wanderer’s soliloquy and actions. Choosing to highlight this disconnect, the poet is parodying the pagans of the wanderer’s world. The wanderer is not only one man but a symbol for the downfalls of paganism. Loneliness, loss, and depression run rampant in the world, and Christianity provides the remedy. The believed characteristics of wisdom, according to the wanderer’s speech, cannot be found inside of the wanderer himself.

The poet wrote the wanderer as miserably melancholy and lonely. Yet, the words chosen are suspiciously melodramatic, revealing an unconscious humor. In effect, he is exaggerating and undermining the depression of the wanderer. Yes, the wanderer feels lonely, but, because he is on a voyage on the sea, there are other travelers with him. The humor lies in the way a man thinks or feels. While it may be serious to the sufferer, it acts as an object of humor to an observer. A lone man cannot face the tormenting nature that the wanderer explains. Nature, according to the lone-dweller, is dismal and apocalyptic, not bountiful as God created. The “ice-cold seas” and “heart-freezing frost” plague him, augment his depression. His body starves for a happy soul, yet his words connote an entitlement to companionship in line 29, when he asks to be “requite[d] with comfort.” The first half of the poem explores his melancholia, while the second half realizes the inevitability of suffering. The narrator tells his ideas of a wise man at the conclusion of the poem:

A good man holds his words back, tells his woes not too soon, baring his inner heart before knowing the best way, an earl who acts with courage.

With this concluding narration, the poet draws attention to the irony in The Wanderer. The lonely man is characterized as unwise, simply because he speaks before he knows the best way. The alteration of the wanderer’s tone on line 58 exhibits his disorientation with his own depressing syndrome.

Underneath the wanderer’s consideration of the end of creation, there is an eerie similarity to the New Testament Book of Revelations. In Revelations, John sees a vision of Jesus; he is left in ecstasy. The wanderer, also, experiences a pleasant vision that distracts him from his sorrows. Yet, his scene void of Christian values. The wanderer’s dream is found on lines 39 to 45 and focus on his lord and the treasures he was gifted when in the latter’s company. This vision causes him to realize the transience of life, along with its most pleasurable and disheartening moments. The Book of Revelations teaches this same idea. As creation began to fall at the hands of God, forces of nature, such as lightning, fire, and hail plague the earth. The wanderer, caught in a storm of hail and snow, states that “a wise man must know the misery of that time when the world’s wealth shall all stand waste…bereft of pleasures.” Because the wanderer is not allied with God, the poet conveys that the former will one day see this ending. The Book of Revelations establishes that there will be a creation of a New Earth and a New Heaven where there is no suffering. However, once again, the poet is exposing the naivety of the wanderer. Because he is not a Christian, he does not know about the Book the Revelations considerations of the end of Creation. But, despite his lack of holy guidance, the wanderer still realizes the catastrophe of the oncoming doom.

By his characterization of the wanderer as indecisive, contradictory, and excessively depressed, the poet satirizes the paganism that was common in a pre-Christian society. The final lines of the poem confirm the didactic tone of the narrator.

All shall be well for him who seeks grace, help from our Father in heaven where a fortress stands for us all.

Those not allied with God will end in suffering and will be destroyed by God and his creation. The righteous will be saved. During the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons, the poet attempted to inform his audience about the power of salvation in Christianity. Despite the wanderers pagan antiquities, the narrator assures that a conversion will still save.