Dover Beach Theme Imagery and Sound

The Beach is a written in the style of a narrative as if it is telling a story. It begins “at daybreak” and describes all the people on the beach at this time of day. It continues to talk about all the different folk that come to the beach displaying the disparity between people and the walks of life they come from. This choice to represent the beach as a whole rather than focus on one particular group of people is a fairly unique concept and has to represent the disparity within Australia.

B. Explanation of the allusion: Dover Beach was a poem by Matthew Arnold which was published in 1867. He wrote the poem while honeymooning with his wife at Dover Beach. Although it contained only 37 lines, it described the beauty of nature on a beach in Dover England as well as the worldly issues of the decline of religious faith. With metaphors and alliteration, Arnold effectively expressed his views and opinions making this most famous work ("Dover").

At first glance, Anthony Hecht's "Dover Bitch" is not only funnier than Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach", but also describes a more "liberated" relationship; the poem is as free from what some would consider stuffy Victorian morals as it is from references to Sophocles. Hecht's urbane and flippant persona tends to win over its audience, whether they find irony in the poem that adds to their appreciation of "Dover Beach", appreciate the poem as a criticism of Victorian morals, or laugh at Arnold's apparent inability to give his girl "a good time." "Dover Bitch" also seems to give more power to the lover, who is kept behind the scenes in Arnold, by bringing "her" opinions and wishes into the foreground of the poem. However, on closer

This poem’s form is clearly adapted to its function because of the one main device that is used to make this poem stand out. The allusion, clearly a reference to the Sirens in “The Odyssey” is the siren’s song itself .The sirens song represents a huge befuddle within readers, and has also been described as the song that nobody has ever heard of because everyone who has heard it has died. This is the most obvious and most notable allusion because according to the lure, Odysseus is tied to the mast of the ship in order to hear the Siren’s Song without jumping overboard (which is what would normally happen due to the songs enchanting power). In this poem, one of the three sirens tells about the song that she sings. Atwood describes in the poem that the anatomy of the song is unknown to all mortals except the sirens themselves. Although, based on the depressing and

The poem I will be analysing today is Song of the Surf by Dan Ashlin. Ashlin is a born and bred Australian poet who writes modern poems. I believe that I have a strong connection with this poem because of how much I personally love the beach with the soft sand and the ferocious waves. In my opinion this poem isn’t just about the waves in the ocean, but how the ocean has its own life and story to tell.

The structure of the poem is free, and what it does is to give us the spirit of the sea. The poem is written in free verse, there is no restrictions of formal rhyme or meter. However, the length of the three stanzas of the poem is very even although it is not exact. It makes the flow of the entire poem became balanced. This form of structure is just like the wave of the sea. The period of the wave is natural and balanced; it is pretty even but it is not exact. Also, there are a lot of commas in the poem. Keeping using commas makes the sentences very long. In fact, the entire poem is constructed by 6 sentences only. It makes the feeling of the poem just like the sea, and lines of the poem are the wave of the sea. Each endings of the waves are

The poem's structure consists of four stanzas. The first, second, and third stanza follow an abcc rhyme scheme, and the last stanza follows an aabb rhyme scheme. A the reader progresses through each stanza, it is seen that the narrator's dissatisfaction of her confinement

The third stanza which marks the middle of the poem begins, "The Ocean said, Come flow freely with me" with ten syllables written in pentameter accompanied by iambic, spondee and trochee syllables. A steady rhythm in meter is noted in the next four lines which declines to trimeter for all four lines. Line fourteen, "and the creatures in my seas." contains pyrrhic, trochee and anapestic syllables. The fifteenth line in trimeter, "Here your tears will disappear," contains for the first time in the poem, a dactyllic syllable accompanied by the iambic syllable. Line sixteen, "and your worries will cease." contains again the iambic syllable now accompanied by the pyrrhic syllable. The last line in the series of trimeter lines is line seventeen which states, "Be the element that I need.". concludes the metered pattern. In lines fourteen through seventeen the meter is measured the same, however there is a new element added to the syllables previously used in the beginning stanzas. The repeated trimeter is suggestive of familiar situation but the new syllable is

Matthew Arnold’s poem, “Dover Beach” does a great job at portraying what love is talked up to be. He starts the poem by saying, “The sea is calm tonight / The tide is full the moon lies fair / the cliffs of England stand / Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.” (1-2, 4-5.) giving off a peaceful and tranquil tone and adding on to that in the following lines of the stanza. Th importance of the setting of the poem is that it paints a beautiful landscape which gives breath to the idea

Through the forest have I gone. /But Athenian found I none, /On whose eyes I might approve /This flower's force in stirring love. /Night and silence.—Who is here? /Weeds of Athens he doth wear: /This is he, my master said, /Despised the Athenian maid; /And here the maiden, sleeping sound, /On the

But as the poem continues, it is interrupted by events that are unnaturalistic which shifts the view of the beach. In the poem, a point occurs where the beach is drastically changed both physically and mentally: “You hear the grating roar… But now I only hear / Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar / Retreating, to the breath” (Arnold 9, 24-26) The differences between the “grating roar” and the “withdrawing roar” of the beach is that when water crashes closer towards land, the beach grates against rocks on purpose. But “withdrawing” roars of the beach shows that the beach wants to escape from land, and venture “down the cast edges… and naked shingles of the world”(Arnold 27-28) where no men can interfere. This excerpt further justifies that men have become too overwhelming and warlike to a point where everyone wants to flee from the danger. The “melancholy [and] long[ing]” of the beach shows that this war won’t end in the near future and will gradually continue. Arnold further justifies taking a stand for oneself when stating how the beach moves towards the “naked shingles of the world.” The beach could be viewed as citizens because in the beginning, we are mostly innocent and calm but whenever an event takes place, we just go along with the circumstance, similar to how water flows with each other and never goes off by itself. We follow what society tells us to do and what is safe to do but in the end, people, running from a problem isn’t the best solution and should stand up for what is

Dover Beach intrigued me as soon as I read the title. I have a great love of beaches, so I feel a connection with the speaker as he or she stands on the cliffs of Dover, looking out at the sea and reflecting on life. Arnold successfully captures the mystical beauty of the ocean as it echoes human existence and the struggles of life. The moods of the speaker throughout the poem change dramatically as do the moods of the sea. The irregular, unordered rhyme is representative of these inharmonious moods and struggles. In this case, the speaker seems to be struggling with the relationship with his or her partner.

Indeed, this sound of sadness is an ancient entity since Sophocles long ago/ Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought/ Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow/ Of human misery. The eternal note of sadness has been important to writers and philosophers throughout time. Arnold believed this same sound existed in all the seas around the world. The waves, sounding of despair, also symbolize the curtailment of religious values. In stanza three the speaker describes the diminishing faith of religion in England: The Sea of Faith/ Was once, too, at the full, and round earths shore/ Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. At one point Englands faith was like a high tide. It was similar to a belt being placed around the world, holding it together. During this time people believed in their religion, thus leading England into a state of order and tranquility. However, now the speaker only feels a troubled sense of blankness: But now I only hear/ Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,/ Retreating, to the breath/ Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear/ And naked shingles of the world. This passage emphasizes a mood of uncertainty and alienation in the world. In stanza four, the speaker ends on a note of melancholy. Love is offered as a possible solace from the sadness of the world, but quickly this idea is abandoned for the world,

The appearance of Dover Beach at this time is only of what the human senses can envision. The speakers looks beneath the surface of Dover Beach and unveils the true nature of the sea. When Arnold stops to really listen to the sea, “he only hears the sea’s melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.” (9). Arnold justifies the theory that things are not always what they appear to be. The world only ‘seems’ to be beautiful, but is ‘really’ a place of conflict, chaos and dangerous misunderstandings.

In the poem "Dover Beach",witten in 1867 Matthew Arnold creates the mood of the poem through the usage of different types of imagery. He uses a dramatic plot in the form of a soliloquy. Arnold also uses descriptive adjectives, similes and metaphors to create the mood. Through the use of these literary elements, Arnold portrays the man standing before the window pondering the sound of the pebbles tossing in the waves as representation of human suffering. The man arrives at the vision of humanity being helpless against nature. Arnold creates the mood by suggesting mental pictures, actions, sights and sounds the man sees. Some examples are "folds of a bright girdle furled", "lie before us like a land of dreams"