Example Peer Writing
The following are excerpts from two essays, written for this course for the first essay assignment.
They are provided here as examples of very good writing. The first is an excerpt from about the middle of an
essay on the theme of exile; the second is the concluding paragraph to an essay on the role of treasure. The
diction in both essays is more sophisticated than what we would usually expect from a second-year student: it
is about what we hope that all fourth-year English students are able to manage.
Images of islands appear across the three texts and tie into the depiction of the natural world as harsh.
Islands, real or – as in “The Wife’s Lament” – metaphorical, place the speakers or their loved
ones far away from the civilized world, which entrenches them further in the natural one. Often accompanying an
island is the allusion to a prison. The speaker of “Wulf and Eadwacer” refers directly to the island
she lives on as a “fen-prison” (5) which is apt, considering that it would be surrounded by water
and extremely difficult for one person to get off of on her own. The narrator of “The Wife’s Lament”
also employs this imagery, imagining her husband “exiled in a far-off land— | sitting under rocky storm cliffs
[…] | surrounded by the sea” (45-48). Although not explicitly referred to as a prison, the allusion is still
evident in the impassive nature of the sea and the image of “rocky storm cliffs” which, given the
appearance of cliffs, can be read as nature’s equivalent to prison bars, isolating the lost husband entirely
from human contact.
I would further argue that the symbol and imagery of the island is at work for the speaker of “The Wanderer”
and the narrator of “The Wife’s Lament” as well, despite the absence of a physical island. In the
Wanderer’s case, he spends much of his time navigating “the lanes of the sea” (4) in a boat, which
itself functions much the same as an island, separating people from each other and the mainland, keeping them in a
pre-defined space. The situation of the woman in “The Wife’s Lament” is unusual because rather than
living on an island, or near a large body of water, she is exiled to “a forest grove, | under an oak tree in the
earth-cave” (26-27). Here the symbol of the island is subverted so it works on a purely metaphorical level.
Instead of water the speaker is surrounded by a sea of trees, which could be dense and impassable in their own right.
Indeed the speaker refers to “hills, | harsh strongholds overgrown with briars” (29-30), achieving an
effect similar to that of the cliffs she imagines surround her husband. She also lives in an “earth-cave”,
which could be read as a natural cell. Therefore, metaphorically, the forest grove functions as an island as well, and
that it is fundamentally opposite to the island the speaker’s husband has been exiled to creates even more
distance between them.
Wealth’s capability to fulfill desire makes it tantalizing and symbolically powerful. Its literary role
in Old English poetry is strong enough to eclipse the subject of romantic love between the sexes, both as the
fulfiller of desire as well as the provider of prosperity and fertility. As the ideas of Christianity mingle with
visceral pagan sensibilities, the Old English period’s presentation of the treasure symbol as the
fulfillment of personal desire is altered from that of glory to that of excess. Personal desire is subverted to
that which is inspired by the divine, allowing the pursuit of desire to become an act of faith. Mortal authority
figures who distribute treasure and earn glory are replaced by a deity, who can be praised at the procurement of
treasure, yet who will never hoard the wealth for himself.