Most people turn their misery into depression, while some creative minds turn their feelings into writings, many times in the form of poems or songs. Additionally, most literary pieces express the theme in one way or another to make the piece contain a deeper message that the audience can understand. The themes prove universal, standing the test of time and exemplifying similar meanings over the years. Various elements present in literature help to develop a theme and make it become a meaningful notion. Regardless of the different seasons used to portray the message of both the poem and the song, “The Wanderer,” a poem written by an anonymous writer in the Anglo-Saxon era, and “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” a song written by Green Day in the twenty-first century, compares the common theme that staying in the past causes isolation and despair through the literary elements of the symbolism of the seasons which reveals the narrator's desolate mood and reluctance to change, imagery to further accentuate the similar theme between the two pieces, and flashbacks to contrast the narrator's current depressed emotions with his past happiness. Despite the fact that the narrators use different seasons to represent the theme, both "The Wanderer" and "Wake Me Up When September Ends" build on the seasons symbolism that describes the narrators' bleak mood and reluctance to change due to their inability to let go of past and present despair. In “The Wanderer” the narrator “toils sadly on the wintry seas” (l. 3) alone due to “grievous disasters and deaths of relatives” (l. 7). The author uses winter to symbolize a time of little opportunity and death for the narrator because winter is already an example of a bleak period of time with little life, and from...... middle of the paper . ..... and in his memories Now. In both pieces, flashbacks contrast the emotions of the gloomy present-day narrator with the happier emotions of the narrator before the change, while the narrators' persistence in the past causes their isolation and misery. In conclusion, through the elements of symbolism, imagery and flashbacks “The Wanderer” and “Wake Me Up When September Ends” produce the common theme that persisting in the past creates isolation and misery. Although written in a different time period, "The Wanderer" proves relevant to today's times through its notable comparison to a song from thousands of years later. Themes stand the test of time and apply to different types of people in different ways depending on a person's understanding of the underlying message. Through literary elements, writers describe a message that the audience interprets with their own wisdom.