Work Cited
Arnold, Matthew. "Dover Beach." Trans. Array The Norton Introduction to Literature. Alison Booth and Kelly J. Mays. 10th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2010. 704. Print.
Summary: Matthew Arnold wrote his poem “Dover Beach” in 1867 after his marriage. It is believed that Arnold addressed this poem to his wife. The title and the descriptive opening lines of the poem refer to the shore in Dover, a ferry port and town in Kent, where Arnold and his wife had their honeymoon. In fact, perhaps Arnold composed the poem while sitting on Dover Beach, watching the sea with its shore smothered with pebbles. The poem is about Arnold’s struggle with faith in religion, life, and love. The poem is actually a narration of his thoughts during his honeymoon as he tries to talk to his wife about their relationship. Arnold uses the seas and waves to help him in describing how he thinks love should be like. He is afraid that he is too much like “turbid ebb and flow.” He begins doubting his own faith and fears that his marriage will not work out. He reveals that just like the tide, his faith was constantly changing during that time, and that our lives cannot be complete with faith alone. Through this poem, Mathew Arnold is suggesting that love can be our guiding light and strength throughout our lives.
Analysis: Arnold conveys his feelings to the readers by using constantly using imagery and metaphors throughout the poem. The poem begins with a very peaceful tone where he describes, “the sea is calm tonight, the tide is full, the moon lies fair upon the sraights” (Arnold 1-3). As Arnold suggests the personal battle in his life, dealing with love, he uses the waves to allude to the fact that relationships are both joyful and painful, and can therefore lead to pure bliss and unhappiness, just like the “pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling” (Arnold 10). In the second stanza he associates human misery and suffering to the sea. Like the sea, humans tend to look perfect and marvelous on the outside, but are miserable and suffering on the inside. The “Sea of Faith” is an important metaphor in the poem that Arnold uses to refer to a time when modern ideals and revolutions had not affected faith and religion in any way. Apparently, Arnold uses imagery to compare his own personal faith to the tide of the sea, which is an allusion to the harshness of the world. Arnold realizes that just like the tide is “Retreating, to the breath” (Arnold 26), faith will also retreat one day, and it is not enough to get through life’s rough times. Arnold seems to believe that the society of that time did not have faith in religion, and that is why he refers to the world as “drear and naked” (Arnold 27). In the last stanza, Arnold again addresses his wife expressing his love, and asking her to be faithful to him.
Review: Initially, understanding Mathew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” was slightly difficult, but the more I read and once I started writing about it, I began to realize that the poem has several possibilities, and that its meaning can be interpreted in different ways. You can think of it as a poem that Arnold wrote to his wife and about love, or you can think of it as poem in which he narrates the continuous religious plight of that period, or perhaps both. Nonetheless, it remains a poem that explains that if you believe in something, then it is worth fighting and struggling for, and bearing the trials and tribulations that follow. Matthew Arnold’s poem signifies that in the end we can only count on ourselves and our one true love.
