DANIEL BROWNceaseless mechanistic cycle of the waves, the pebbles on the beach are, as
M.W. Rowe observes, a way of imaging the atomist hypothesis, which sees
the ultimate reality of all matter to consist "of nothing but undifferentiated
micro-particles clashing ceaselessly in a vacuum." 13 In an age when
materialist science is eclipsing traditional Christian belief, the ocean
eventually represents not "The sea of faith" but a vast indifferent mechan-
istic universe of matter in motion.
In its final stanza, "Dover Beach" comes to a precarious rest on dry land.
The retreat of "The sea of faith" at the close of the penultimate stanza
exposes the shoreline, "the vast edges drear," and introduces the terrestrial
world as an atomistic substrate, the "naked shingles of the world." These
descriptions are of the beach, the stretch of land shaped and defined by the
reach of the tide as it both deposits the pebbles and sand it forms, along
with shells and other marine detritus, and partially sweeps away such
deposits and erodes exposed coastal rock. As a consequence of these tidal
actions, beaches are formed smooth and flat. They retain this nature as
geological upheavals push them upward as terraces or plateaus above a
new beach. It is as such a raised beach, entirely removed from "The sea of
faith" and composed of the atomistic pebbles or sand produced by the
tides, that Arnold's "darkling plain" should be understood.
The atomistic "roar" of pebbles finds a further echo in the "clash by
night" that closes the poem. The "darkling plain" is no longer "Swept"
with the tides that originally formed it but "with confused alarms of
struggle and flight": the similarly involuntary but organic dynamism of
creatures as they act out of the imperative for survival. To a readership
acquainted with Darwin's researches - as indeed most of its readership is
likely to have been following the publication of "Dover Beach" since its
first publication eight years after The Origin of Species by Means of
Natural Selection (1859) - the "confused alarms of struggle and flight" may
suggest a phrase that Darwin introduces in the subtitle of his book: The
Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. These "confused
alarms" suggests a desperate cacophony as animals prey upon one another
in an ongoing "struggle," responding instinctively with "fight or flight"
reflexes. In this reading Arnold's "ignorant armies" are identified with
contending species: the "type[s]" that Tennyson's Mother Nature, many
years before Darwin's Origin, values over and above the individuals that
comprise it. "Dover Beach" figures this "struggle for life" in the military
world where the welfare of the individual is subordinated to that of the
group. Similarly, individuals within species are "ignorant" in their actions,
behaving with reflexive obedience to the dictates of instinct, much as
armies do to the commands of their officers.
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