The Wanderer

Today, the signature works of Old English poetry read much like contemporary superhero movies. The poetry often recounts epic showdowns that bring together larger-than-life figures representing forces of light and darkness, the grand theatrics of good versus evil. The Wanderer is a striking exception. The battle is long over. The conflict is not expressed by forces clashing on the battlefield but rather by forces within the survivor’s complex psychology. He is conflicted, haunted by dreams and memories, and at a loss to explain why it all happened. As such, the poem moves not toward some grand, if bloody, victory but toward insight, the quiet detonation of an epiphany. The Wanderer earns the dark reward of awareness: The world does not, cannot, make sense.

With its complex framing structure, however, the poem actually tracks another narrative journey toward insight. The poem is dominated by the journey of the Wanderer himself. He is an exile. His is a physical journey as he struggles about the frozen wasteland of an unfamiliar world far from his homeland, realizing that the world is joyless, empty, and cold. Framing that narrative of despair, however, is the story of an unnamed