[3] As is typical of Old English verse, the metre of the poem is alliterative and consists of four-stress lines, divided between the second and third stresses by a caesura.

Each caesura is indicated in the manuscript by a subtle increase in character spacing and with full stops, but modern print editions render them in a more obvious fashion.

The degeneration of “earthly glory” is presented as inevitable in the poem, contrasting with the theme of salvation through faith in God.

The wanderer vividly describes his loneliness and yearning for the bright days past, and concludes with an admonition to put faith in God, "in whom all stability dwells".

The development of critical approaches to The Wanderer corresponds closely to changing historical trends in European and Anglo-American philology, literary theory, and historiography as a whole.

In John Josias Conybeare's 1826 compilation of Anglo Saxon poetry, The Wanderer was erroneously treated as part of the preceding poem Juliana.

Thorpe considered it to bear "considerable evidence of originality", but regretted an absence of information on its historical and mythological context.

J. R. R. Tolkien, who adopted the poem's ubi sunt passage (lines 92–96) into The Lord of the Rings for his Lament for the Rohirrim, was one of the scholars who expressed dissatisfaction.

[16] The "beasts of battle" motif, often found in Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry, is here modified to include not only the standard eagle, raven, and wolf, but also a "sad-faced man" (sumne drēorighlēor, l. 83).

[19] A plurality of scholarly opinion holds that the main body of the poem is spoken as monologue, bound between a prologue and epilogue voiced by the poet.