The Wanderer & the Wife's Lament Analysis

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The Wanderer and The Wife’s Lament Outlooks Shayna Wiegand While both The Wife’s Lament and The Wanderer are about being exiled, isolation and feeling lonely, The Wife’s Lament tells a pessimistic story about being left by the one she holds dear, whereas The Wanderer tells a story about being exiled but in the end has an optimistic outlook on his experience by placing faith in God, “in whom all stability dwells”, thus also offering a Christian consolidation that The Wife’s Lament lacks. While The Wife’s Lament focuses on being isolated because of her loved one betraying her throughout the whole poem with no change in her outlook, The Wanderer starts off focusing on the misfortunes of his past, but comes to realize that things will get better in the end. The Wife’s Lament is written with a pessimistic tone throughout the entire poem because she is left by the one person she held true, just to find out that he has betrayed her and leaves her alone. She starts off by saying, “I make this poem about myself, my own fate. I have the right to say what miseries I have endured…Endlessly I have suffered the wretchedness of exile.” She is commanded to stay where she is by her lord, but dwells on the fact that she has no friends or anyone that she can trust where she is, which creates sadness for her. “My lord had ordered me to take up my abode here, though I had among these people few dear loyal friends; therefore my heart is sad.” She then finds out that her husband has been hiding murderous thoughts through a facade. Throughout the poem she expresses the anguish felt by longing for a lover that will never come by reflecting back on times when he says that the only thing that will tear them apart is death, and feels as though their marriage and love has vanished. To add onto the disheartening tone the poem also tells about how she is told to live in a cave with very
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