This is an interesting concept to apply to The Seafarer, whose narrator seems to feel a sense of belonging whilst travelling the sea despite the fact that he is obviously disillusioned with its hardships .The main character undergoes a transformation in what he considers home and this dramatically affects his life and lifestyle. Towards the end of The Seafarer the poet forces us to consider our mortality, and seems to push the notion that life is just a journey and that we will not truly be at home until we are with God .

The first instance of a sense of home in this poem comes with the description of the former life of the narrator in his pre-seafaring days. He leaves his old life for some unspecified reason, telling us that he was "cut off from his kinsmen", and he talks about this with a definite sense of regret and loss. Winter on the sea is presented as an "exile" or "wræcan"1 , a form of punishment where someone is forced to leave their homeland, the place where they belong. It seems that in the early stages of the poem the seafarer identifies his life with his kinsmen on land as his home, the place that he belongs.

with his seafaring life. During the early descriptions of his time there, it is painted as a life of hardship and penance. Images and adjectives of the sea and life there are harsh and foreboding-"ice cold", "hung round with icicles" , "fettered with frost". The sea is seen as cold, and not just in the physical sense .It is remote, a place of despair , an earthly purgatory, where there is "always anxiety .... as to what the Lord will bestow on him"2. The narrator is cut away from the comforts of human companionship and his former life and home. He learns to take his pleasure in nature and the natural , such as the song of the swan(ylfete song) 3, but he implies that these are not conventional pleasures and that the "normal" man would not be able to fathom the harshness of the seafaring lifestyle .

An increasingly important link between home and lifestyle becomes evident, the two are seen as symbiotic-"Let us also attempt to win there[home] to the eternal bliss" .The narrator's new "home" on the sea allows him to become closer to God and the kingdom of heaven, and is portrayed as a life of spiritual purity , whereas those on land (who live a life of relative luxury) are seen as morally deprived and lacking in virtue . Home becomes indicative of the emphasis and direction in an individuals life , and in some ways the poem seems to be a denunciation of the conventional home life because of it's secularity-"Blessed is he who lives humbly, mercy comes to h

Some common words found in the essay are:
Towards Seafarer, Heaven Home, , Publishers Oxford, Guide English, live life, home heart, heart fulfilment, home heart fulfilment, conventional home life, definite sense, home poem, sense home, eternal home, stages poem, home life, kingdom heaven,
Approximate Word count = 985
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)