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An Image Narrative Analysis of "The Wanderer"

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The Wanderer is an elegy whose surface narrative—the story baldly told—concerns the travails of an Anglo-Saxon warrior who has survived the destruction of his comitatus (fellowship of warriors) and whose doom, therefore, is to wander forever alone in an inhospitable world. As portrayed, the wanderer’s world is one of perpetual winter whose only evidence of humanity is empty ruins. The image narrative lying beneath the surface narrative of this poem skillfully creates the sense-structures, the emotional vehicles, for transferring the wanderer’s feelings of loss, desolation, doom, and dogged perseverance to the reader.

This image narrative is divided into 11 descriptive sections (lines 1-5, 6-23, 23-44, 45-57, 58-63, 64-72, 73-87, 88-95, 95-105, 106-110, 111-115), the first 10 of which build to a sort of climax in section 8, followed by a sort of imagistic and bald thematic summary in sections 9 and 10 respectively. The 11^th section must be considered an extension of the falling action in 9 and 10, but it is so perfunctory and—unlike the 10 previous sections—creatively uninspired, that I am unable to account for its presence in any satisfying way.

The idea of the presence of larger trope structures in Old English literature is not unique. Ruth Welham, in The Riddle of Creation, Metaphor Structures in Old English Poetry, details the extended architectural and human-body metaphors that permeate Old English poetry. In fact, her opening introductory sentences make it clear that metaphor is grounded in image: "Metaphor is the intrusion of the concrete into the mind. In the world of language, a world largely removed from direct physical sensation, it is metaphor that brings the physical or sensory into our thoughts" (1).

It is not a big step to extend an inspection of individual, sensory-based metaphors to that of images in general. When we do so in a work like The Wanderer, we discover a unified arc of imagery that leads us through the poem emotionally even as the decoding of the language signs reveals overt meaning to our intellects. Despite the huge cultural differences between then and now it is amazing that, when given a chance, these images, over a thousand years later, still have the power to move a reader emotionally.

Lines 1-5 are an opening statement concerning the wanderer’s fate. The overt imagery of these lines portray one who must endlessly struggle and endure great physical discomfort as he travels winter seas. The lines focus us on the wanderer’s hands as oars, "stirs with (his) hands the ice-cold sea (hreran mid hondum hrmcealde sæ)", a strategy which provides the reader with both a visual and tactile sense of the wanderer physically immersed in cold water. This initial sense of physical exposure to an inhospitable environment is effectively echoed throughout the poem, which develops the wanderer’s world as one of eternal winter.

Carol Braun Pasternack, in The Textuality of Old English Poetry, takes a detailed look at the syntax of The Wanderer. With respect to these opening lines, she notes the greater weight of those carrying the described image as compared to those acknowledging the Lord’s mercy: "In this initial frame, the cold reality of the world has greater weight because it wields six verses against the three given to grace" (37). In this way we see how the image narrative coordinates artfully with another element of poetry.

Lines 6-23 detail idealized rules of behavior for a warrior deprived of kinsmen; here the images invoked are those of the consuming slaughter that the wanderer survived and the wanderer’s routine awakenings in the lonely, dark hours before dawn to recall his loss. The emotional cost of this endless lamentation is further anchored to the physical through the vehicle of the heart and breast which the wanderer must always hold closed and keep concealed. The physical cost of recollection—with the nobility of the warrior’s solitary and stoic endurance linked to it—are repeated in later divisions. Line 23 introduces another repeated theme of closure and concealment (which also segues into to the next section of images): the theme of the wanderer’s lord buried in the earth.

Here, it would be well to mention that the original diction, as well as the already mentioned, original syntax, would have added its own emotional effects to the poem. When speaking of the word choices in these and other lines, Welham points out that the words "…increase the sense of the body as a container held tightly closed, and the binding of speech is also the binding of the mind" (47). Welham also specifies the effects of language that portray the external world "…as a decaying structure that reflects the wanderer’s own depression and restricted speech" (46).

Lines 23-44 provide the reader with details of the upside of being a warrior, the good life that such a one lives when he has a generous lord to support him and a warm, companionable meadhall in which to call it a day. This section is introduced with the images of the dead liege lord and the wretched wanderer traveling the desolate, winter waves. These images of lord, kinsmen, and hall are presented in a negative framework; that is, the reader is presented them as something denied, cherished things that the wanderer must do without.

As an additional counterpoint, the poet here physically animates sorrow as the exile’s closest friend. This device provides emotional force to a colorless generality by making sorrow a living thing whose sea-cold heart palpably echoes the wanderer’s sea-cold hands and whose malevolent attention is actively directed toward the wanderer. Additionally, the image of an animated sorrow who is the wanderer’s only intimate stands in stark contrast to the dream sequence which follows it. Thus, even as the wanderer momentarily in dream enjoys the attention of his liege lord in the mead hall, sorrow is there leering at us over his shoulder.

Lines 45-57, then, represent an abrupt awakening for both the wanderer and the reader. This is the first of three sections whose primary purpose is, in fact, imagistic. By this I mean that they neither further the surface narrative nor provide us with new information on fate, details of life as a member of a comitatus, or noble behavior in the face of adverse circumstance. In this section the wanderer wakes up on a winter beach where seabirds preen, a scene on which the poet lingers purely for the purpose of heightening the emotional stakes for his audience.

The introduction of the seabirds at this point in the image narrative (which from the perspective of the surface narrative might easily be viewed as mere digression) is quite masterful because the birds both mockingly mirror the preceding dream presence of the comitatus and anticipate the image of the comitatus as spirits adrift on the winter seas of memory. Additionally, as described with spread feathers, the birds are easily pictured with wings spread, suggesting any number of strung-up gods or demi-gods, not necessarily Christian. Finally, the predominantly white feathers of sea birds also mirror the falling snow—normally unrelated things becoming linked and overlapping in an extended image narrative.

The overt presence of so much whiteness here (birds and snow and, in the manner in which easily associated things start to insert themselves willy-nilly, a pale beach or shingle) does more than underscore the cold bleakness of the wanderer’s physical circumstances. It also exerts an emotional pressure that underscores the presence of death and the purity of the wanderer’s suffering. Certainly, such an assertion is toward the subjective end of imagistic speculations but the purely emotive resists satisfactory prose summation. Still, such speculations fit within Lois Bragg’s more general observation in The Lyric Speakers of Old English Poetry that "The image of the wanderer, developed over the first 57 lines, partakes of both the concrete and specific, on the one hand, and the fantastic and typical on the other. The wanderer’s capacity as a symbol for the fallen world is made in this section by the close association he has with his setting" (131).

I can’t help wondering at this point if a scop might have emphasized the mood of the setting, this bleak loneliness stretching to eternity, with a harp imitating seabird cries among the repeating break of small waves. In fact it is a moment that manages to be dramatic while also inviting extended contemplation. Thus, we are prepared to accept the more direct, statements of the next section, lines 58-63 in which the poet directly links the wanderer’s despair to his sense of roaming a declining, winter-bound world.

The sense of an inexorable winding down in these lines is remarkable as the poem unfolds an arc of rhetorical gestures, beginning with the threat of the wanderer’s spirit growing dark and progressing his comrades departure from the meadhall and finally to the unraveling of the world and time. This linear progression—perhaps, more accurately a falling arc—from the inner personal, through the inner-outer of close comrades recollected, to the entirely outer of place and time, underscore the utter bleakness and finality of the wanderer’s circumstances. Bragg, in discussing the question of who speaks these lines observes "Whether the wiseman is identified with the wanderer is not so important as long as one recognizes that the imagery pattern and theme is continuous" (132).

Lines 64-72 return to rules of behavior for being a noble exile. While lines 6-22 dealt with the need for emotional stoicism, these lines give us a list of rules for more general behavior. Of all the substantial sections of the poem this one seems the least effective in contemporary terms with respect to the evolving emotional arc of the poem. One can imagine that these lines represented the epitome of noble behavior for an Anglo-Saxon audience and made clear the wanderer’s strength of character, thus heightening that audience’s sense of sympathy for the wanderer and thereby their identification with his emotional state. The section tells us that the exiled warrior must be reserved and thoughtful in his speech and actions so that he will always determine the proper course of an Anglo-Saxon nobleman/warrior rather than fall inadvertently into one of the easier courses that are always present. Presumably, this is meant to remind us of why the wanderer’s world must be a deserted one of ruins beset by endless winter. His world is the idealized, romanticized world of self-imposed exile, not necessarily the only world available to one who has lost his comitatus. Read as poetry today however, these lines seem an almost campy digression that stall the poem and actually detract from its gathering feeling of hopelessness.

Lines 73-87 describe the idealized world of the exile intertwined with a history, both mythical and semi-autobiographical, of how that world came to be. This section begins by telling us that, for the wanderer, "this world’s riches stand deserted (þisse worulde wela weste standeth)," an interestingly active way to describe ruin. (The poem, in general, makes good use of active verbs) This opening statement underlines the conclusion of what has come before, that the wanderer’s circumstances are self-created: the world’s comforts are there but they are unavailable to the noble exile who remains true of heart because the only ones with whom he should share the riches are not there. As Welham notes, "Opposed and yet parallel to the mental world of the wanderer is the exterior world of decay, the fallen walls that are a visible reminder of the lost happiness of the dryht hall. The wanderer does not actually see these walls; his reflections arise out of his own feelings" (48). Bragg agrees, "The image of the wanderer was presented in a quasi-realistic manner, but the image of the ruined wall is not given any more reality than that of the vehicle of the simile. Realism is absent in this section: the metaphor is all" (133). And in case the presence of the over-arcing image narrative is in doubt, she adds, "Yet despite the highly stylized language and theme, many of the same images encountered in the wanderer section are present" (133).

Thus, all is decaying emptiness amid snow, ice, and wind. Time stops as events are depicted as both past and present, all metaphorically existing together and forever. The lord lies dead, deprived of joy (further emphasizing that his surviving retainer, in order to remain loyal, must also be deprived of joy), and all the wanderer’s fellow retainers are envisioned in fallen splendor around their liege. Simultaneously we are told how war carried its noble victims off in traditionally epic terms: a bird of prey carried off one, the gray wolf carried off another, and a noble (presumably the Wanderer himself) buried one in a grave.

This last description undoubtedly served to further place The Wanderer within the expected forms of Anglo-Saxon poetry but also succeeds in the present day because it places the Wanderer squarely as a participant in our own misty-mythical past just as, for example, the chariot race in Ben Hur might. Additionally, the Wanderer is not only part of the action but the mystery of his survival is underlined. He is obviously of the most noble spirit and yet he did not die with his comitatus. Why? That the question is not answered is vintage story telling as it actively engages the reader in his or her own imaginings. Such unanswered questions are also consistent with the image narrative’s emotional pressure of binding and concealment.

This section closes with an allusion to the real ruins (Roman and Neolithic) of Anglo-Saxon England, which then could have appeared to be literally the deserted ruins of giants. Thus, the description is linked to an Anglo-Saxon audience’s own surroundings and that audience would have been reminded very tangibly of the mythic mysteries embedded within the quotidian. The effect, one assumes, would have been much like that of the contemporary, late-night, ghost story that invokes the abandoned house just down the street—only more so, as the entrance of the supernatural into a tale for that audience would not have required a modern day suspension of disbelief. Barbara C. Raw places this idea of setting in an Anglo-Saxon context in The Art and Background of Old English Poetry: "In narrative poetry the gnomic idea that everything has its appointed place is extended to create a landscape which springs from the characters and their actions" (48).þ

Lines 88-95 set up and deliver a series of rhetorical questions, followed by an anguished invocation of what is denied the wanderer. From the desolation of unfathomable ruins locked in eternal winter, the wanderer addresses the reader directly in a series of parallel structures. Caught as the reader is within the evolving arc of the image narrative, the rhetorical rhythm becomes overwhelming:

Lines 95-105, carrying the full emotional freight of what has just passed, paints one last description of the world as ruins in winter, from the perspective of what has been lost. Night is fallen and the wanderer stands in the wind swept tracks of the comitatus before a high wall evoking the sinister shape of a serpent. Fate, in a single word, "mære", is ambiguously described as being both glorious and notorious, expressing the ambivalence the wanderer feels as his self-identity as a noble warrior constantly rubs against the harsh reality of self-imposed exile. His comrades are fallen in battle like cliffs battered by winter seas and he himself stands battered by wind and hail. Bound by his code of honor, all the wanderer can do is endure.

Lines 106-110 comprises a recapitulation of the poem’s theme. Were it delivered without the emotional weight of the preceding 105 lines, we would not be moved. However, we are now standing at the end of the world looking out on chill, dark nothingness. All is indeed transitory and worthless.

This seems the logical end to the poem. As Ida Master Hollowell puts it in "On the Identity of the Wanderer", "These seem to be last words" (83). But, there are five additional lines of which Hollowell says, "It’s difficult to take these lines as other than editorial commentary" (83). I agree.

Lines 111-115 of the poem seem a sort of afterthought, a sort of perfunctory Christian rationalization that is not developed in the image narrative. Given the inspired composition of what precedes them, these lines are flat and uninspiring. If the poem’s impulse is indeed Christian, why isn’t that impulse developed in the image narrative? Why does the author settle for an echo of the opening line: "Well is it for him who seeks mercy; solace too is the Father in Heaven, who remains the permanent one for all of us (Wel biþ þam þe him are seceth, frofre to Fæder on heofonum, þær us eal seo Fasestnung standeth.)."

Whoever composed The Wanderer certainly had the skills to imbue the poem with such a theme. However, God appears overtly in only two other instances: in the very first line and a half, which state that the "creator’s mercy (metudes miltse)" awaits the beleagued exile, and in line 85 where a "creator of men (ælda scypend)", the wanderer tells us, destroyed the world of the Wanderer when he lost his comitatus. These overt appearances are extremely brief for a poetry that revels in repetitive allusions to anything important and leads one to question their thematic authenticity if they may indeed only be translated as allusions to the Christian God. Additionally, in line 85, the context in which the "creator of men" is referenced is especially dark and runs counter to the idea of a merciful God. Thus, it would appear that there are actually two Christian themes curiously undeveloped and in opposition to each other.

Though this paper only intends to proffer the study of the image narrative as an important form of poetical analysis for Old English poetry, it clearly addresses the question of whether or not the poem is thematically Christian and falls in the end into the non-Christian camp. Hollowell says, "The list of those who are in some important respect hesitant (to accept the presence of a Christian theme) is impressive and cannot be ignored" (84). Adding, "The basic problem that must be faced by any analyst of the poem in exploring the degree of Christian influence is the question of the unity of the poem. The first and last lines seem to have Christian implications…the problem is that these lines are uncongenial to the rest of the poem" (84).

Other questions of thematic unity in a poem like The Wanderer are clearly addressed through examination of the image narrative, even if they cannot be put to rest. For example, the matter of how many voices exist in the poem becomes less troubling. As Welham says,

The question of voice from the perspective of image narrative rests on what sort of emotional distance a certain type of voice fosters in the reader. Thus the ambiguity of who speaks and why is satisfactorily answered by examining the emotional effect that the poet seemed to wish to create at any given point.

The Wanderer is a success as poetry, even today, because of the artfulness of its image narrative. It is the dark beauty of that narrative as counter-pose to the Wanderer’s humanity that in fact gives the poem its tension. While individual images clearly can be appreciated on their own, the unified adroitness of the narrative through 110 lines is remarkable. The poet patiently layers our sense of this man as a lonely, fragile human being stubbornly holding on to his honor with images of recollection and of a winter world utterly devoid of harbor. Bragg puts it very well, "Despite the many gnomic lines, this poet has succeeded in appealing to the modern taste for showing, not telling, for there is little need for overt moralizing after images such as these" (134).

Note: In-text translations are my own.

Bragg, Lois. The Lyric Speakers of Old English Poetry. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson U P, 1991.

Hollowell, Ida Masters. "On the Identity of the Wanderer," The Old English Elegies. Green, Martin ed. Cranbury: Associated U P, 1983.

Pasternack, Carol Braun. The Textuality of Old English Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1995.

Raw, Barabara C. The Art and Background of Old English Poetry. New York: St. Martins, 1978.

Wehlam, Ruth. The Riddle of Creation, Metaphor Structures in Old English Poetry. New York: Peter Lang, 1997.

Calder, Daniel G. and Stanley B. Greenfield. A New Critical History of Old EnglishLiterature. New York: New York U P, (1986).

Mitchell, Bruce and Fred C. Robinson. A Guide to Old English. Malden: Blackwell, 2001.

          The Wanderer, various translations:

Alexander, Michael. The Earliest English Poems. Baltimore: Penguin, 1966.

Bone, Gavin David. Anglo-Saxon Poetry. New York: Books For Libraries P, 1970.

Gordon, R. K. Anglo-Saxon Poetry. New York: Everyman’s, 1970.

Raffel, Burton. Poems from the Old English. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1968.