Dover Beach Reminisce

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Nicholas Photadthong 301119427 English D102W 10:30 Tutorial Poem: Dover Beach – Matthew Arnold Topic: Discuss the situation and setting of “Dover Beach.” Pg. 59 Dover Beach Reminisce In "Dover Beach," poet Matthew Arnold sets his poem in Dover Beach that correlates with the title of the poem. The speaker uses figurative language to set the mood of the poem. This allows the reader to comprehend what is going through the poet’s head as he is observing nature at in it entirety. "Dover Beach" illustrates how figurative language is a useful device to determine the setting and situation, literally and figuratively, in which the speaker is located. In the first stanza, the speaker illustrates to the reader, the location and the time of day. He speaks of the beach after dusk and of the emotion that he feels while at this beach. He says the bay is serene and the night air is sweet. It is so quiet that "you hear the grating roar of pebbles which the waves draw back and fling" (lines 6-10). This informs the reader that the dark coupled with the sound of the pebbles is an eerie reflection of the night. Despite the shadows that loom over him, the poet treats the “roar of the pebbles” as a lullaby and the darkness as his blanket. However, the mood slowly changes as the poem progresses. In musical terms, the speaker describes how the mood shifts from being serene to something entirely different. He describes it as a cadence, which is a rhythm that has a consistent tempo as "tremulous cadence slow" bringing "the eternal note of sadness in" (lines 13-14). The mood changes from one of tranquility to one of sadness. Thus, just as the mood of a particular situation can change according to the beat of a song, so can the mood of his literary work. When a person is in a particular place, even if they
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