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Paganism and Christianity in "The Seafarer"

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Hello again,

Your help is helping me immensely, I just had a few more questions.

1) You mentioned investigating religion to support the notion that the poem could be read as a dialogue. Could you give more specific details and examples of that? I understand the concept, it would just help to know where to look in the poem for the examples you are talking about.

2) You then mentioned looking at contrasting themes, could you give some more insight and examples on this?

Thank you so much!!

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Solution Summary

This response addresses the roles of paganism and Christianity in the Old English poem "The Seafarer." It analyzes in some depth how the poem contrasts the old world of paganism with the newer Christian religion and asserts the superiority of the latter.

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I'm glad to hear that you are making good progress on your paper. It's a very interesting topic.

In the first section, we have the description of the "I" of the poem enduring the miseries of freezing weather, alone except for the cries of the birds and the sounds of the waves. In this extended litany of sufferings, the narrator does not seem to mention or turn to religion for solace, something that we would expect were the speaker a Christian. He does not pray or otherwise seem to consider religion as a possible support or refuge in his distress. At line 39, however, we get a shift to a religious voice that states:

there is not so ...

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