Anglo-Saxon Poems Answers

1) Narrator describes life at sea as very cold, dark, and lonely. But he also says that he cant stop because he enjoys going to far foreign places.

2) "Mighty spears have slain these men, greedy weapons have framed their fate." The narrator hinted that they were all killed by raiders or perhaps another tribe or group.

3) She wants her husband to suffer the same pain and loneliness that she had to endure.

4) In each poem the characters are experiencing great loneliness, each poem also talk about what it used to be like or better lives they could be living. In "The Seafarer" the narrator talks about how warm and good life is inland. In "The Wanderer" he reminisces about his old tribe that was slaughtered. In "The Wife's Lament" she says that her and her husband were very close and lived together but she was exiled by stress from his people.

5) All of the three poems are very similar in the way that they all are people that are experiencing longing for a better life, the are also suffering from some sort of exile whether it was forced or it was put on by choice. Each of the poems compare their situations to being cold dark and lonely which causes great sadness.

6) The people of this time were able to endure great hardships and stretches of loneliness because they believed that they would be rewarded after death by going to heaven. 

8) They might tell her that dwelling on your sadness will not resolve the problem, and that turning to god will give you a silver lining after death and bring her eternal happiness in return for a short time of suffering.

9) I believe that the speaker changes after line 64 in "The Seafarer" because the way the the poem shifts feels completely different. The poem starts with the narrator saying how hard and lonely it was to live his live, but that the reason he does it is because he views traveling around the wold and living in different places rewarding. The second part makes it feel like that wasn't enough reward for his effort and that he would be rewarded by going to heaven after death. The second half was said in the form of a prayer where as the first half barely mentions the presence of god.