Dover Beach

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“Dover Beach” Essay

In “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), the narrator is in a house on the beach, and he is looking out the window at the sea and the beach. It is dark out. The lighthouse and the moon provide the illumination. The man is speaking to a woman in the house with him. The poem is a dramatic monologue, it tells a story. The sea serves two vital purposes in the poem – it is used as both a setting to set the mood, and as a means of contrast. Matthew Arnold wrote this poem in 1867. The beach house in the poem is somewhere on the English Channel, most likely on a piece of beachfront called “Dover Beach”. Some very eminent aspects of this poem are pebbles, Sophocles, the “Sea of Faith”, the Aegean Sea, and “ignorant armies”. Guy Montag recites “Dover Beach” in Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, to link the parallel conditions of human hopelessness and misery.
The first part of “Dover Beach” portrays the vista the narrator is viewing as he looks out upon the sea. The “sea is calm”, and the “tide is full”. The moon and a French Lighthouse illuminate the shoreline, the “naked shingles of the Earth” where the land meets the sea. The “cliffs of England” are visible. This first part of the poem sets the dismal, depressing tone that dictates the poem from this point on. It also introduces two vital parts of the poem. It conveys the geography and setting, and it also connects the back and forth, back and forth motion of the pebbles with the hopelessness of the world. Even though the sea is calm, the waves are still drawing back and flinging the pebbles on the shoreline. The “grating roar” is the waves of the English Channel striking the shoreline. This motion of the pebbles caused by the waves “begin, and cease, and then again begin, with tremulous cadence slow”. It is this repetitious and unavoidable cycle of the pebbles as they are dominated by the waves of the sea that...