In Matthew Arnolds beautiful yet haunting Dover Beach the oc

In Matthew Arnold’s beautiful yet haunting “Dover Beach,” the ocean is the most prominent and constant image that binds the poem together. Using lines from the poem, discuss how the sea operates literally and figuratively (metaphorically) throughout the poem to reveal a truth (or truths) about mankind. Do you find “Dover Beach” to be primarily a positive poem or a negative poem? Explain.

Solution

Using vivid images of the sea to do so, Matthew Arnold writes his poem about a world bereft of all beauty, truth, and optimism. In fact, there is only one positive stanza in this poem: the first one. This first discusses the positive images of the ocean where the “sea is calm” and the “moon lies fair” and the “tide is full.” This is where the happy images end, however, because the second stanza refers to all of the negative sea images with its “moon-blanched land” and its “grating roar” and its “tremulous cadence.” The negativity continues with the third stanza where the negative aspect of the sea even pervades the past, specifically during Sophocles time where it continued to affect the “turbid ebb and flow / Of human misery.”

Of course, the importance of the poem stands in the two metaphorical stanzas at the end. Stanza four, that focuses on the \"Sea of Faith\" is very intent on its pessimism. Where there was faith in the speaker\'s mind, now there is nothing.