Question

Dover beach

What is the speaker doing?
The speaker uses the idiom “ebb and flow,” which is an expression often associated with the sea, to describe human misery in stanza 2. What does this expression mean? Use context clues to develop your explanation.

Answer 1

Ebbs and flows in this context mean that human misery comes and goes.

Step-by-step 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.

We can say that though hardships and miseries are experienced by all humans, eventually, it would all go away, drifting into the sea as we continue to live on and experience more happiness and betterment flowing in.

The stanza referred is this excerpt:

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.