Skip to main content

In the poem "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold, how does the image of the light on the French coast in Lines 3-4 take on a more symbolic significance...


On the French coast the light


Gleams and is gone...



Arguably, this light symbolizes hope and connection with the rest of the world. It appears for a moment, inspiring hope, then dissolves in the distance.


"Dover Beach" is a poem that taps into an existential anxiety that will become more pronounced after World War I. Arnold's narrator anticipates the existential crisis of the Modernist age. The third stanza, beginning with "the Sea of Faith" is important as well. Religion, which provided meaning in an otherwise incoherent world, is fading in power and strength, "retreating, to the breath / Of the night-wind."


The coastal setting is significant. In literature, coast lines are the borders between the known world and the Unknown. It is the the line between the firm, stable land on shore vs. the mobile and violent sea.


In the final stanza, in response to this hopelessness and uncertainty, the narrator turns to his/her love. Companionship is one's only solace:



Ah, love, let us be true


To one another!



The first line of the stanza begins with a sigh, which can indicate relief, spiritual exhaustion, or both.



For the world, which seems


To lie before us like a land of dreams,


So various, so beautiful, so new,


Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,


Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain...



"The world," symbolized by the French coast, is not the place of abundance they had imagined. This previous sense of abundance is indicated by the use of the emphatic adverb "so." They are disenchanted by the loss of light on the other coast, causing them now to see the world as a place of absence, loneliness, and uncertainty. The only thing on which they can depend is the presence of each other, "on a darkling plain." 


"Darkling" is both literal and metaphorical here. It is night, so the sky is becoming dark. However, the world is also becoming a darker and more frightening place:



Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,


Where ignorant armies clash by night.



There is parallelism between darkness and confusion, as well as ignorance. There could very well be an ongoing battle on that other coast. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more