Dover Beach
Final Essay. Sea as the Main Image. (Poem “Dover Beach” by M. Arnold) The summer is about to enter our lives. With the warm and sunny days, come memories, to remind of a tender sea-breeze touch, the sun gently petting our bodies, waves rolling in to tickle our feet, boiling sand burning … I am sure, that everyone has something covert and cherished associated with the hot summer days and … Sea. Sea has always attracted people by its mysterious existence, charming waves and inexplicable but always magnificent mood. Scholars and scientists try to study it, philosophers pose theories and conclusions about it, artists try to capture the Life of a Sea on canvases, while poets like Matthew Arnold explore its existence and magnetism through verse. Arnold’s famous poem “Dover Beach” resembles an ode to a Sea (=Sea of Life?). Sea is the central image of the verse composition. The author portrays a man standing before the window, looking at the water, pondering over the sound of the pebbles tossing in the waves as symbol of human sufferings; the man arrives at the vision of humanity being helpless against nature. Arnold creates the mood by suggesting pictures, actions, sights and sounds which this man experiences: “hear(s) the grating roar( auditory image)”, sees the moon(visual), feels the calmness of the sea(visual and perhaps tactile and auditory image)… The capricious description of the sea creates the changeable mood of the poem, the poem which ,thanks to it, is built on the contrast.