Matthew Arnold wrote Dover Beach to express the real issues at hand with everyday life. He describes life and how human contact, truth, love and meaning are important in everyones day to day life. Mary Shelley also showed this theme in her novel, Frankenstein, a book of a creature and his creator, both struggling to find meaning and friendship. The creature displays the truth of this theme when he seeks revenge on Victor Frankenstein due to his loneliness and neglect from others. In Black Boy, Richard Wright describes his life and how he was raised as a child. He tells us that he was beaten and shown that a person can only survive if she is tough and firm. These writers show us how love and kindness impact a persons life and how human contact is a necessity in this complex and busy world.
Dover Beach was written to express to the reader that life is a battlefield and it is important that we maintain peace, by giving love and truth. Matthew Arnold used a sequence of descriptions and words to display a sense of questioning, and the reality that everyone needs peace and serenity in their life.
He calls his love to the window to enjoy the scene and sweet night air; there is one element out of tune with the peaceful scene, however, and the speaker strongly urges his love to Listen! to the rasping sound from the shingle beach as the waves, flowing in and out, drag the loose pebbles back and forth. (Bergquist).
This rare scene is obviously cherished by the narrator in the poem for its serenity and beauty; for its gentle and flowing sounds: something obviously rare to the poet. He talks of sounds and the images to exaggerate the feeling that the scene in front of him is almost a dream; that this is rarely ever present in the world before him everyday.
The theme of the poem (the poets melancholy awareness of the terrible incompatibility between illusion and reality) is supported by the use of visual imagery to express illusion and auditory imagery to express reality (Fain).
Arnold writes Ah, love, let us be true/ To one another! For the world, which seems/ To lie before us like a land of dreams/ Hath not really, neither joy, nor love, nor light (29-33). He expresses to his love to be true to one another because the world has no promises; he writes that the world does not give love, hope, meaning, happiness, certitude, peace or help for pain. He presents to the readers that we live in a battlefield of pain and darkness. Matthew Arnolds last three lines describe the disturbing flow of human suffering: And we are here as on a darkling plain/ Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, / Where ignorant armies clash by night (35-37). He describes life as a war and a constant fight for the promises it fails to bring. By this he is reminding the reader to seek and give love and to continue the faithful human contact. Arnold states throughout his poem that desperation and loss of hope can be lessened by love and meaning; Though on one level one may call Dover Beach a love poem, the possibility that human love and communication can somehow make the loss of faith bearable (because it will not make the world go away) is really given short shrift (Bergquist).
In Mary Shelleys Frankenstein the issue of human contact is very much displayed. Mary Shelley, herself was left mother-less as a child and was raised by her father. Her life becomes translated into her fiction... But what has somehow eluded proper treatment is the resultant real subject of this monster tale: the failure of human beings to parent their offspring in such a way that they will be able to take part in society rather than retreat into themselves (Claridge). Throughout the book, Victor Frankenstein constantly avoids his creature. He leaves it at its birth and fails to parent it.
Frankenstein immediately flees from the room, abandoning the monster at the hour of its birth. In so doing, Frankenstein condemns both the monster and himself to a tortured existence that will become progressively worse with each passing day, a never ending agony which can only be relieved in the mutual demise. (Bloom).
Mary Shelley displays the theme that human contact and love are vitally important in this world and without it, we are nothing. She knows this from her own personal experience. The lack of parenting in this novel leads to the creature becoming a monster, killing most of Victors family and friends. The display of Frankenstein avoiding his creature is the proof that human love and contact prevent the destruction and hazardous lifestyle that many abandoned attain. Thus, throughout the book, the creature was alone, discovering things on his own; however with no companion and the neglect from others he threatened Victor Frankenstein that if he had not made him a companion, he would be with him on his wedding night. This want to be loved and have a meaning in life would be a normal situation for one who was abandoned; thus the creature Frankenstein created and abandoned, decided to use his power to overrule Victor and threaten his life.
At one point the monsters tale of his life allows Frankenstein to offer his conditional concern, judging, in the manner of his father, his progeny worthy of attentionHe continues to fail his creature, however, never gaining insight into the monsters tortured psyche, so that at the end of the novel he is able to exclaim without irony, Let the cursed and hellish monster drink deep of agony; let him feel the despair that now torments me. (Claridge).
The monster also goes through the feeling of being unloved and unwanted. Not just by Victor, but by society. He feels the neglect, isolation and unloving approach that people feel when they see him. They turn away in fear by the eight-foot grotesque creature:
Volume II is primarily the monsters story as he confronts his creator, Victor Frankenstein. It contains a description of and a reaction to the circumstances of his most unnatural birth, his tragic abandonment by his father, and his gross anatomy and fearful aspect that excludes him from human society and companionship. (Bloom),
This drives him to complete depression and overwhelming sadness, causing him to turn evil on society. The monster also questions life and its meaning; and also the loss of hope comes towards the end of the book when he realizes that Victor Frankenstein will never make him a companion so that he can feel loved; therefore, Shelleys thought of human contact, love, hope and meaning remain constant.
Black Boy is an autobiography written by man who has experienced alienation, hate, discrimination, sadness, fear, and loss of hope. However, Richard Wright displays a sense of knowledge of all of these things and in his novel explains that love, care, freedom and knowledge of who you are is all a necessity in life. Living in the south as a young boy, Richard Wright grew up in a house where all you needed know is how to defend yourself and how to be tough and firm. His mother was left by his father with two young boys, went through abandonment (much like the creature in Frankenstein) and realized throughout the years, that all you need is love, hope and human contact and how important kindness and care is in a persons life.
Wrights Black Boy published in 1945, isso far as plot goesmolded and shapely, beginning in speechlessness and anger, and ending in articulateness and hope. The boy who at the age of four set fire to his own house, became a drunkard at the age of six, and was so frightened of a new school that he could not write his own name on the board, by the final pages has fought and lied his way out of the racist south. (Thaddeus).
In his early childhood, Wright was beaten and abused by his parents to toughen him up for what was to come in the future. He learned himself that being beaten and hurt was a way to toughen up and that he really needed care and love from his family. He was taught to follow the way of a regular, southern black man; to conform to the life that his mother set out for him. If a young black man could not accommodate himself to the existing Southern status, he was left completely lonely, helpless, and defenselessWrights protagonist has to leave the south to grow (Dennisova). When Richard was brought up as a child, it was put in his head that he must conform; however, when he grows up, he realizes that there is meaning to life other then violence and stealing. By Richard trying to get out of the south to grow, shows us that he knows there is meaning and hope.
For Richard Wright the problem of self-identification provided the major quest of his lifehe found that [his philosophy] fit in with his intimate vision of the world, and that the more he learned, the more the philosophy seemed to correspond to his own vision of lifeAnd it is true: throughout his life he was trying to define himself existentially, identify his roots, his place in life as a Negro, as an intellectual, as a man, as an American. That is he was literally obsessed with the idea of self-identification. Man must first learn about himself, insisted Wright (Dennisova).
Wright searched his whole life for himself, ever since he realized there was meaning. He wanted to have contact with his roots as well as feeling wanted and loved.
My life as a Negro in America had led me to feel . . . that the problem of human unity was more important than bread, more important than physical living itself; for I felt that without a common bond uniting men . . . there could be no living worthy of being called human. (Wright).
He obviously wrote this book in hopes that readers can know that hope, meaning, love and human contact are important to everyday life and that without unity and human contact, we are nothing. Wrights novel clearly possessed the theme of reason and meaning to life. He was groping, but groping towards something. The ultimate paragraph states that Wrights search was for the essential significance of life (Thaddeus).
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