Exeter Book

THe Ruin

15. The wall is being used as both a metaphor and a description of a reality. Explain.

sorry i cannot figure out how to chage the origional questions, and i got al confused when i first posted.

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The narrator of the poem begins by describing a damaged stone wall "wrecked by fate". The wall was meant to separate nature from the civilized. It represents man’s hubris as well as his finite role on this Earth. Everything man made, however, eventually decays like man himself. Nature reclaims its temporary loss and the wall sits in ruin.