Journal 8

Compare the elegies “The Seafarer” and “The Wife’s Lament.” Discuss the personal experience each poem presents and the speaker’s attitude toward the experience. What similarities and differences do you find?

In both of these Anglo-Saxon stories, “The Wife’s Lament” and “The Seafarer”, their was a sad theme. In the Wife’s Lament, sadness is presented by the wife’s broken heart towards the loss of her husband. In the Seafarer, sadness is presented by looking back and seeing that he wasted his life away. The Seafarer doesn’t regret his life because he looks back upon all his great trips at sea. Where the Wife’s Lament shows regret in the way her life has went by. The wife doesn’t get to experience happiness because of her husband’s death. He stays true to her vows and lives as a lonely sad women. “The Wife’s Lament” regrets her life and “The Seafarer” regrets his past.