Anglo-Saxon works typically have motifs, or reoccurring ideas. Throughout the three poems “The Seafarer,” “The Wife’s Lament,” and “Beowulf” have some common motifs. Some that stands out in particular are loneliness and pain. Grendel, one of the main characters in “Beowulf,” was “shut away from men.” He was one of monsters that were cast out. The only one like him was his mother. Each day he laid in pain in the darkness. Similarly, the sailor in “The Seafarer” was cast out to sea; however his casting out was by his choice. As he grows older, he begins to feel pain as the ocean “showed him suffering in a hundred ships.” All his life he lived on ships, moving from one to another, stuck in a cycle that he couldn’t end. The sea is lonely even though there are other men aboard the ship; the guys are acquaintances, but that is the most they’ll ever be. The wife in “The Wife’s Lament” was cast out by her husband’s family. She is sad and “weeps her banishments.” She suffers “pitiless anxiety.” All of the characters in these three poems are suffering. They have been cast out from society, doomed to live life alone. These are themes, motifs, that reoccur throughout the poems.
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