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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Where does the narrator claim to stand (l. 90)?

2. What does the narrator note a man will have from his seafaring (l. 42)?

3. Which of the following does the narrator exclude from the mind of one who seeks to sail (ll. 44-47)?

4. What “hangs in the balance before its due time" (ll. 68-69)?

5. Per the narrator, what "is the best eulogy" (ll. 72-73)?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the strongest pattern of alliteration in line line 42, "that he never has sorrow over his seafaring," and why?

2. Consider ll. 64-66, “because hotter to me / are the joys of the Lord than this dead life, / loaned, on land.” Given the physical and historical context of the poem, as well as its content, why might “the joys of the Lord” be described favorably as “hotter” by the narrator?

3. In ll. 55-57, the narrator returns to something of a motif in the poem, stating that “He does not know, / the man blessed with ease, what those endure / who walk most widely in the paths of exile.” What tone is conveyed by the motif? What purpose does it serve as it follows the previous few sentences that speak to longing for the sea?

4. Consider the narrator’s comments that “When life fails [a man], his fleshly cloak will neither / taste the sweet nor touch the sore, / nor move a hand nor think with his mind” (ll. 94-96). What is the “fleshly cloak,” and what wears it? How do you know?

5. The narrator comments that “He has no thought of the harp or the taking of rings, / nor the pleasures of woman or joy in the world, / nor anything else but the tumbling waves— / he always has longing who hastens to sea” (ll. 44-47). What tone is conveyed in the comment, and how?

6. The narrator comments that “He has no thought of the harp or the taking of rings, / nor the pleasures of woman or joy in the world, / nor anything else but the tumbling waves— / he always has longing who hastens to sea” (ll. 44-47). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in the comment?

7. Consider the comment that “the lone flier cries out, / incites my heart irresistibly to the whale’s path / over the open sea” (ll. 62-64). What is the lone flier? How do you know?

8. Consider the narrator’s assertion that “Always, for everyone, one of three things / hangs in the balance before its due time: / illness or age or attack by the sword / wrests life away from one doomed to die” (ll. 68-71). What tone is conveyed by the passage, and how is it conveyed?

9. Consider ll. 58-102 as a unit. What is the overall tone of the passage, and how is it conveyed?

10. What tone is present in the following passage, and how is it conveyed? “The days are lost, / and all the pomp of this earthly kingdom; / there are now neither kings nor emperors / nor gold-givers as there once were, / when they did the greatest glorious deeds / and lived in most lordly fame” (ll. 80-85)?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The narrator makes much of the disjunction between life aboard ship and life in the town. What effect does the narrator’s focus on the difference between settled and seagoing life have on the reader? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 2

Consider the circumstances in which the original text of “The Seafarer” exists, notably the historical and physical contexts of the work. Who would the expected primary audience be? What in the text and its physical and historical contexts suggests it? How do they do so?

Essay Topic 3

Consider the central message of "The Seafarer." Argue how the message and / or its support is incorrect; identify the weaknesses in the poem's central message and / or the way it presents the message, articulating why the identified weaknesses are, in fact, weaknesses.

(see the answer keys)

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