Wednesday Nov.18- Sample Expository Paragraph

In Response to Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach"

In the poem "Dover Beach," Matthew Arnold's diction aids in shifting the tone from pensive, to cynical, and finally, to defeated. The opening of the poem presents a thoughtful speaker. He describes the sea as "calm" and expresses delight at the "fair" moon and calls his lover to enjoy the "sweet...night air." Words like "glimmering" and "tranquil" confirm the mystical mood and reinforce the peaceful, pensive tone. The tone shifts dramatically at line 9. "Listen!" This simple word and the accompanying exclamation point break the reader and the speaker from their passive reverie. The description of the "grating" roar and the "fling"-ing of pebbles recasts the ocean in a sinister role. Ultimately, the "grating roar...brings the eternal note of sadness in." The shift in tone is complete. The speaker considers the ocean-formerly viewed as "tranquil" and soothing- a confirmation of his ever waning Faith. He describes the "withdrawing" "retreating" waves and compares the "turbid ebb and flow' to the "Sea of Faith." In the final stanza, the tone shifts again, to defeated at the speaker's proclamation, "Ah, Love, let us be true to one another." The "ah" demonstrates a break in the more formal diction of the previous stanzas and presents the anger and dissolution the speaker feels at the perceived "world which...hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light." He is begging his love to proclaim her loyalty in the face of this lack of "certitude" the world presents. The ocean, often considered a symbol of constancy and comfort, is here presented as inconstant, a reminder of the human's native condition, "swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night."