The Wanderer

The Wanderer bears the burden of immense loss, but within the pagan culture that the Wanderer embodies, that difficult reality is rendered infinitely more difficult because it cannot be explained, save through the ever-fickle workings of chance, represented within Medieval culture by the concept of the Wheel of Fortune, or Rota Fortunae. It turns and some flourish, while others perish: “All is wretched in the realm of the earth / The way of fate changes the world under heaven” (Lines 106-07). Great armies rise but then fall, leaving survivors inevitably to question why: “What happened to the horse? What happened to the warrior? What happened to the gift-giver?” (Line 92).

Within the pagan culture, the questions can only be rhetorical. Why has the Wanderer lost his homeland, comrades, and liege? The Wanderer’s lyrical lamentation is expressed by questions he understands can never be answered, save by the logic—or illogic—of fate, leaving him only a difficult life of endurance and stoic acceptance.

In this, the lament of a soldier who has lost everything expands to a wider, universal philosophical posture: Nothing is reliable, achievement is ironic, expectation is pointless, and explanation beggars logic. Sorrow, then, is the inevitable and universal outcome, leaving each person, like the Wanderer, suspended between regret and despair, tormented by memories and haunted by dreams.