Analysis of "Dover Beach"

Analysis of “Dover Beach” Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) wrote “Dover Beach” during or shortly after a visit he and his wife made to the Dover region of southeastern England, the setting of the poem, in 1851. The first stanza opens with the description of a nightly scene at the seaside. The speaker calls to his beloved to come to the window, to share the visual beauty of the scene. The speaker projects his own feelings of melancholy on to the sound of “the grating roar/Of pebbles, which the waves draw back, and fling/At their return, up the high strand” (9-11). This sound causes an emotion of “sadness” in him. The second stanza introduces the Greek author Sophocles’ idea of “the turbid ebb and flow/Of human misery” (17-18). A contrast is formed to the scenery of the previous stanza. Sophocles apparently heard the similar sound at the “Aegean” sea and thus developed his ideas. Arnold then reconnects this idea to the present. Although there is a distance in time and space, the general feeling prevails. In the third stanza, the sea is turned into the “Sea of Faith”, which is a metaphor for a time when religion was not questioned. Arnold illustrates this by using an image of clothes. When religion was still the main focus of society, the world was dressed “like the folds of a bright girdle furled” (23). Now that the faith has disappeared, the world lies naked and bleak: “the vast edges drear/And naked shingles of the world” (27-28). The fourth and final stanza begins with a pledge by the speaker. He asks his love to be “true” and faithful to him. For the beautiful scenery that presents itself to them is not really what it seems to be. This world does not contain any basic human values. These have disappeared, along with the light and religion and left humanity in darkness.
“Dover Beach” is a poem with the melancholy tone of an elegy and the personal intensity of a dramatic monologue. The poem consists of four stanzas, each containing a number of verses. The first stanza has fourteen lines, the second has six lines, the third has eight lines, and the fourth has nine lines. As for the metrical scheme, there is no apparent rhyme scheme. Because the meter and rhyme vary from line to line, the poem is free verse, that is, it does not have a regular meter and does not contain rhyme. However there is cadence in the poem.
Arnold uses a variety of figures of speech, including the following examples. Alliteration can be seen in lines one through four: “tonight, tide; full, fair; gleams, gone; coast, cliff”, in lines seven through eleven: “long, line; which the waves” and in line twenty- three: “folds, furled”. Assonance can be seen in line two: “tide, lies”. An example of paradox and hyperbole can be seen in lines nine through ten: “the grating roar/Of pebbles which the waves draw back”. Examples of metaphor can be seen in lines ten through eleven: “which the waves draw back, and fling, /At their return, up the high strand” (comparison of the waves to an entity that rejects what it has captured), in line seventeen: “Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow/Of human misery” (comparison of human misery to the ebb and flow of the sea), in line twenty-one: “The Sea of Faith” (comparison of faith to water making up an ocean), and in line twenty-six through twenty-seven: “to the breath/Of the night- wind” (comparison of the wind to a living thing). Examples of simile can be seen in lines twenty-one through twenty-three: “The Sea of Faith…/Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled” (use of like to compare the sea to a girdle) and in lines thirty through thirty-one: “for the world, which seems/To lie before us like a land of dreams” (use of like to compare the world to a land of dreams). Arnold uses first, second, and third- person point of view in this poem. Generally, the poem presents the observations of the author/ speaker in third- person point of view but then shifts to second- person when the speaker addresses his beloved, as in line 6 “Come” and line 9 “Listen! you”. The speaker then shifts to first- person point of view when he includes his beloved and the reader as observers, as in line 18 “we”, line 29 “us”, line 31 “us”, and line 35 “we”. The speaker also uses first- person point of view to declare that at least one observation was made by him and him alone: “But now I only hear”. The person addressed in the poem is Arnold’s wife. However, since the poem is a universal message, the reader may assume that the woman may be listening to observations of any man. Arnold and his wife, Frances Lucy Wightman, visited Dover Beach twice in 1851. The year they were married and the year Arnold was believed to have written “Dover Beach”. Arnold’s central message or theme is this: The questioning of the long- standing theological and moral principles has shaken people’s faith in God and religion. In the mid- 1800’s, the idea of faith was beginning to crumble under the weight of scientific advancements. Consequently, the existence of God was cast in doubt.