ENGLISH PROJECT

PAPER I

EURO SCHOOL, THANE

NAME: Sohan. Ajay. Vernekar

CLASS: 12 B

ROLL NO.: 7

ISC AFFILIATION CODE:

TOPIC ATTEMPTED:

SUBMITTED TO:Ms. Nupur Guha

 EUROSCHOOL, THANE
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 I would like to express my special thanks of gratitude
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Index
The poet is Matthew Arnold. It represents the clash between science and
religion. This poem opens on a beautiful naturalistic scene. The poet
(speaker) stands on the cliffs of Dover Beach. He is gazing out at the majesty of
the beauty of nature.
Sadness is creeping in, and the poet is reminding about how the recent
scientific discoveries have forever changed the human values with the relation
to nature. In this way, he brings science and faith in conflict. The poem
presents all the theology and scientific theory with the message that all such
things in the world can’t make life meaningful if there is no love.
I chose this topic because Dover Beach is a 'honeymoon' poem. Written in
1851, shortly after Matthew Arnold's marriage to Frances Lucy Wightman, it
evokes quite literally the "sweetness and light" which Arnold famously found
in the classical world, in whose image he formed his ideals of English culture.
In fact, those public values are privatized in the very word the poem conjures
for us: honeymoon. Dover Beach fundamentally seems to be about a
withdrawal into personal values. Historical pessimism moves in swiftly as a
tide.
Throughout this poem, the poet makes use of several literary devices. These
include but are not limited to:
Alliteration: the repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of
multiple words. For example, “lie,” “like,” and “land” in stanza four.
Allusion: a reference to something outside the scope of the poem. In this case,
the poet alludes to Sophocles, a Greek playwright.
Simile: a comparison between two things that uses “like” or “as.” For example,
“To lie before us like a land of dreams.”
Imagery: the use of particularly interesting descriptions that help readers
imagine a scene in great detail. For example, “The tide is full, the moon lies
fair.”
One night, the speaker sits with a woman inside the house and he is looking
out over the English Channel near the town of Dover. Both see the lights on the
coast of France, which is almost twenty miles away. Sea is quiet and calm.
When the light over on the side of France, the speaker focuses on the English
side, which still remains tranquil. He is making a trade-off between visual
imagery and aural imagery. He describes the “grating roar” of the pebbles
which was pulled out by the waves and calls the music of the world as an
eternal note of sadness.
Further, the speaker flashes back to ancient Greece, where Sophocles heard
this type of sound on the Aegean Sea. Then he introduces the poem’s main
metaphor and suggests that faith is fading from the society as the tide is from
the shore. The speaker expresses this downfall of the faith through
melancholy diction. In the last stanza, the speaker directly addresses his
beloved, who is sitting next to him. He is saying to her that they always be true
to one another and to the world that is laid out before them. However, the
speaker straight forward warns that the world’s beauty is only an illusion.
This is due to the fact that a battlefield full of people fighting in the absolute
darkness.

Through this poem “Dover Beach”, speaker manages to comment on his most
recurring themes. Its message is that the world’s mystery has declined with
the rise in modernity. But, this decline is painted as particularly uncertain,
dark, and volatile. The poem is particularly powerful due to its romantic
streak having almost no tinge of the religious. Even he speaks about the Sea of
Faith without linking it to any deity or heaven. This word “faith” has a definite
humanist tinge here. It is no accident that the sight which is inspiring is the
untouched nature, and this is almost completely absent from any human
involvement. Here, what the poet is expressing, is an innate quality, a natural
drive towards beauty.
He explores the contradiction through the poem’s most famous stanza. This
stanza compares his experience to that of Sophocles. It reveals the darker
potential covered under the beautiful illusion. Actually natural beauty is
reminding us about human misery. This is because we can find this beauty, but
we can never quite transcend our limited natures to reach it. These two
responses are not mutually exclusive. This type of dual experience between
the celebration and lament for humanity is often possible for Arnold.
Ironically, the tumult of nature is nothing compared to the tumult of this era of
life. It frightens the speaker, to beg to his lover to stay true to him. He worries
that this chaos of the modern world will change her too.

The poem epitomizes some kind of poetic experience, through which the poet
focuses on a single moment in order to discover the profound depths. To
accomplish the end, the poem uses many imagery and sensory information in
his poem. It begins with the visual depictions like a calm sea, fair moon, and
the lights in France across the Channel. The first stanza is switching from
visual to auditory descriptions like the grating roar and tremulous cadence
slow. This poem is intelligently and sensibly employing many enjambments
which is a popular poetic technique. It is also very clear that Arnold does not
wish to create a pretty picture meant for the reflection. On the other way, the
beautiful sights are used significantly due to the fear and anxiety which
inspires the speaker. Thus the poem so wonderfully straddles the line
between the poetic reflection and uncertainty. Therefore this poem has
remained a well-loved piece throughout the centuries.
The conclusion of the poem provides a solution for the speaker’s maladies. He
beseeches his “love” to be true to him; only in their devotion to each other will
they find comfort and certainty in the “confused alarms of struggle and flight”
of life. In this poem, it is clear that almost every stanza is full of imagery.
Alongside metaphor, the use of imagery is used to explain the ideas and
themes Arnold wants to communicate. Imagery has contributed to the
development of the themes of loss of faith, the changing nature of Christianity
and a possible recurrence of moral decline, which seems to be similar to the
same problems that affected the people in the ancient Greece. It appears that
Arnold is not happy with the impact industrial revolution on his society,
especially due to the people’s acceptance of scientific view of creation and
revolution.
The poet has represented the spiritual crisis of Victorian England. He draws
similarity between the confused human race of his age and the uninformed
army that fights in darkness. His message in the poem is presented in the last
stanza when he calls upon his companion to build a strong, faithful and honest
relationship in the falling world.

Arnold believes that only strong personal relationships can save people from
falling apart in the miseries of human life. Mankind will only find solace in
true love. In an elegiac tone, Matthew Arnold has tried to build a truthful
account of the age of restlessness and suggests the readers how to stick during
the hard times in the Dover Beach.
https://acknowledgementworld.com/
https://beamingnotes.com/
https://www.britannica.com/
https://www.literature.org/