Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold Essay Example

encircling the earths shore could also probably be at it's full, as at the time England was expanding to the farthest horizon and across many islands, spreading its religious ideals as well. Arnold also describes how his ancestors were better off than him and his contemporaries, who had been robbed of their faith as a result of new advances in science, particularly the theory of Evolution that made people doubt what was written in the Bible. This made people lose faith in religion and become nihilistic and agnostic.

Despite the materialistic progress Victorian people were becoming mundane and atheistic . Their religious faith was declining and they couldn't count on anybody, even those who were close to them. People always questioned what was previously believed by their ancestors and looked on everything with suspicious eyes. The scientific ideas, religious uncertainty and skepticism shoal Arnold's own beliefs. The icy breath of the 'night wind' the symbolized science extinguished the warm flame that religion provided man with and the 'sea of faith', the illusion that concealed the realities of human misery had withdrawn exposing the ' naked shingles of the world' leaving it stripped and bleak.

Thus Arnold uses the image of the sea a a metaphor in this poem and deals with the natural scene and the moral application of the metaphor when it matures and becomes very important as the poem progresses.