Common Themes of Despair in Fahrenheit 451 and “Dover Beach” In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury uses the poem Dover Beach to portray sadness in a society without books. This shift in emotion creates the scene to be looked upon in a negative way and changes the whole visual of the poem from content to feeling depressed.

In the novel Fahrenheit 451, Montag reads the poem which makes Mrs. Phelps cry. The poem symbolizes the emotionless, detached society that people live in. The poem affects Mrs.

Bradbury chose to have Montag read the poem “Dover Beach” to Mildred and her group of shallow, ignorant friends because the poem directly reflects the nature of their dystopian society.

The poem conveys a message that it is only through love people can find the lost faith. Major themes in “Dover Beach”: Man, the natural world and loss of faith are the major themes in the poem. He laments the loss of faith in the world with resultant cruelty, uncertainty, and violence.

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.

Matthew Arnold’s 1867 lyric poem ”Dover Beach” predominately imparts a mood of somber, reflective melancholy.

Ebbs and flows in this context mean that human misery comes and goes. Explanation: The poem, Dover Beach, written by Matthew Arnold, uses the term ‘ebbs and flows’ to describe how human misery comes and goes. Ebbs and flows, in the context of sea movement, refers to the coming (flows) and going (ebbs) of the sea tides.

Sophocles was a Greek tragic dramatist. His popular tragedies are Oedipus Rex, Antigone, Ajax etc. Sophocles, in his famous tragedy, “Antigone” refers that he heard the “turbid ebb and flow/ of human misery” in Aegean sea, a part of Mediterranean sea.

By Matthew Arnold This poem is set at the beach in Dover, on the southeastern coast of England. The speaker can hear the sound of the waves crashing on the shore, and see a light “on the French coast.” From there, we take off into historical and metaphorical worlds inside the poet’s mind.