The speaker of The Seafarer tells how the life of a sailor is. Through his experience, he shows that sailors feel hopeless and helpless while they are on their voyages, and that this incidents and feelings make them think about the importance of life and of God. Therefore, this poem demonstrates how people get closer to God due to tough experiences.
This poem is divided into two parts, the first one depicts the past of the speaker and the second one is about the present. In the first part, the speaker narrates his life during the times of his voyages, and how wretched he felt because of the danger he had to face on the sea; for instance, he mentions the extreme weather conditions like snow and risky seas in which he has traveled. He also mentions that he suffered from hunger and desolation; he felt lonely on the sea because he misses the comfort of the life on ground. This hard experience on the sea, the fear, and the sense of being hopeless and helpless made him think that he could die at any moment. However, he also considers that he is alive because God gave him a new opportunity to appreciate what is really important. Furthermore, he expresses that a person that has not passed through these difficulties is unable to really comprehend his misfortune, and this is the same reason why some people do not care about God. In fact, when the speaker says “But there isn’t a man…so graced by God/That he feels no fear as the sails unfurl,” he is telling that although people live with all the comfort that they could get, they do not think that all what they have is because they are graced by God, and it is only through experiences in which a person feels he/she is going to die that they remember that they believe in God.
Moreover, the second part of the poem reinforces this idea of getting closer to God because when the speaker is on shore, he acknowledges that anything is important if people do not believe in God, thus he tries to preach others about his matter. He tells them that the emptiness they feel, and which they are trying to fill through material and pagan pleasures is not the best way to feel good; instead, he advises them that “…The wealth/of the world neither reaches to Heaven nor remains,” so he explains that materialism does not have any reward, and it only leads to destruction as he exemplifies when he says “…Fate’s three threats/Would fall: illness, or age, or enemy’s/Sword”. Hence, he implies that people must fear God in order to reach Heaven. This concept is reinforced when he states that “…nothing/Golden shakes the wrath of God/for a soul overflowing with sin, and nothing/Hidden on earth rises to Heaven;” therefore, he affirms that a materialistic life will not please God and will not become a means of salvation because God will judge us according to our actions. In addition, the speaker ends the poem giving advice to other people when he tells them to act according to the law of God if they really want to reach Heaven.
Finally, the fact that the speaker recalls his memories as a sailor is a way to tell people that they should not wait until something really dreadful happens to remember that God is the one that will give them eternal life. In fact, this theme is recurrent on literature of the Anglo-Saxon period because of the presence of the Catholic Church and its purpose of converting people into Christianity.
By Pamela Regidor
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