Line 8-10 of a Wife’s Lament Analysis Essay Example

The downfall of most people is relying on hope. In “A Wife’s Lament”, the narrator finds herself in bad situations thanks to her hoping for things to come out well. This shows in the sentence, “I traveled seeking the sun of protection and safety, accepting exile as payment for hope” (“the Wife’s Lament” 8-10). The narrator is a woman who is exiled, most likely because she is a traded item in peacemaking. Her new love’s family, though, has different plans for her. “But the man’s family was weaving plans in the dark, intending to drive us apart” (“The Wife’s Lament” 11-12). The poem doesn’t go into detail about how the family went about driving the two lovers apart, but it ended with the narrator being sent to live in the woods. And while this in itself probably couldn’t have been prevented, there’s something key that happens at this point in the poem, “I wept” (“The Wife’s Lament” 14). She cried because the love she had for him died so easily. She hoped it would be strong enough and she was torn apart when that hope failed her. The poem then goes on to talk about how much the narrator hates her now lost lover. She condemns him to unhappiness and loneliness, which is the life she has been living at this point. Beyond all of this, though, it’s apparent that she can’t move forward because to her lingering hope. The narrator is well aware that there are other villages out there with different people who could possibly take her in and let her start a new life. But she chooses to live in a cave for the rest of her life, cursing the man. Half of this poem is about how angry she is and that’s because she can’t move forward. It’s because she still clings to the past. She can’t start a new life because of a hope that still is kept within her heart. It’s that hope, that same hope she has from the beginning of the tale, which drives her to where she ends her tale. Almost all of our narrator’s continued suffering is due to her overabundance of hope. If she were to