The Dream of the Rood

Blog #2
This past semester, a class I took required us to read a few Anglo-Saxon poems. One of which was called “The Dream of the Rood.” The main focus of Anglo-Saxon poetry was often centered on Christianity; spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ and getting churches started. In this poem a man has a dream, and in the dream he sees the journey of Jesus Christ to his crucifixion in the cross’s point of view. Basically, he saw how the cross started out as a beautiful tree and then was eventually cut down and formed into a cross. In the man’s dream, the cross is humbled and feels terrible about playing a major role in the death of Jesus Christ. The controversy going on during the time that this piece was written was, as I stated before, the spreading of Christianity. These Anglo-Saxon writers believed that no matter what happened in life, as long as they were loyal to God and obeyed His will by spreading the gospel and witnessing to the lost, that they were bound for eternal glory in heaven.
The publication is believed to be around the 6th or 7th century, and I believe that the issue the writer (unknown) is addressing is that of the cross’s humility toward the supreme being of Christ. The cross knows he must go through with it, and also knows that it is the duty of Christ to be crucified to save the world from their sins. It is kind of like a ‘catch 22;’ in the poem, the cross says, “Once I was made into the worst of torments, most hateful to all people, before I opened the true way of life for speech-bearers” (The Dream of the Rood). At the same time, the narrator of the story, who is also the dreamer, describes the worthiness of devotion to the cross, and looks forward to the righteous being able to enter heaven.
As with most of Anglo-Saxon poetry, the looking past the negative and looking towards eternal glory is stressed repeatedly. Therefore, the writer’s purpose, to me, was to show how this ordinary man had this dream about the crucifixion of Christ, and told of how the cross even felt guilty. The writer entails both Christian and heroic themes in the poem, due to the fact that the cross was, at first, “beckoned with gold; gems had covered worthily the creator’s tree. And yet beneath that gold I began to see an ancient wretched struggle, for it first began to bleed on the right side” (The Dream of the Rood).
The word choice of the writer is simple. He does not use many special words or slang, but that of Anglo-Saxon poetry. This is a really good poem, and I recommend it for any type of reading. It’s crazy to me how it is dated all the way back to the 7th century, and it still muzzled its way into our English books today.