Dream of the Rood

Symbolism is no stranger to the poem Dream of the Rood, the narrator describes a symbolic dream he had thought out the poem. He first starts off with the beautiful tree. “Beauteous tree uplifted in the air, enwreathed with light, brightest of beams”.

As the reader, I interpret this as if, the narrator is surrounded by something holy and powerful. For the tree to be described with such beauty and light it must represent someone or something. Suddenly in front of the narrator's eyes, the beautiful tree “swiftly changed in hangings and in hue”

The tree was no longer “gold” this can be interpreted as reaching the man-made reality.

The narrator than began to describe the beautiful tree speaking to him. It explained how it was involved in Christ’s death. The tree begins to speak about men-made. How they “kidnapped” the rood from the forest and made it into a cross, only to execute the prisoners.

This is when it shifts to the symbolism of the cross. The rood stood tall and strong in order to obey Christ and not fear the manipulation from others.

As Christ was then later taken down from the tree and buried the beautiful rood was still there and people knew to honor and supplicate to the rood in order to reach Christ.

My interpretation for this is that the beautiful tree who was once so golden turned into a different hue and went through rough times yet in the end it turned out to be the most honorable rood there is. It’s a message to stand with Christ through the hardships and understand the sacrifice Christ’s had done for their sins.

To conclude, this poem was filled with symbolism and metaphors to interpret into different meanings. The cross and the rood were both key factors in order to interpret this correctly in our own words. I truly liked this read.

#ENGL2322 #Rood