BREAK Flashcards
When was “Break Break Break” written and published?
It was written in 1834 right after the sudden death of Tennyson’s friend Arthur Henry Hallam, the poem was published in 1842.
How is the meter used?
The poem is four stanzas of four lines each, each quatrain in irregular iambic tetrameter.
What does the type of meter and rhyme reflect?
The irregularity in the number of syllables in each line might convey the instability of the sea or the broken, jagged edges of the speaker’s grief. Meanwhile, the ABCB rhyme scheme in each stanza may reflect the regularity of the waves.
How was this poem interpreted?
Although some have interpreted the speaker’s grief as sadness over a lost lover, it probably reflects the feeling at any loss of a beloved person in death, like Tennyson’s dejection over losing Hallam.
According to the speaker how is life? What does the poem imply?
For the speaker of “Break, Break, Break,” the fleeting nature of life is deeply troubling. The poem implies that the speaker is mourning someone’s death and being forced to face the fact that this person will never return. Although the poem doesn’t clarify the circumstances of the speaker’s loss, it’s clear that it has thoroughly unsettled the speaker, who can’t even stare out at the ocean without feeling tormented by the knowledge that everything in life eventually comes to an end.
Which important comparison we find in this poem?
The poem’s deeper interest is in the series of comparisons between the external world and the poet’s internal world. The outer world is where life happens, or where it used to happen for the speaker. The inner world is what preoccupies him now, caught up in deep pain and loss and the memories of a time with the one who is gone.
To illustrate the tension between the speaker and the external world, “Break, Break, Break” plays with contrasts. For instance, the first stanza presents a bleak setting, calling the stones on the shoreline “cold” and “gray,” and pairing this somber image with the speaker’s inability to “utter” the troubling thoughts that continue to “arise.” This clearly establishes the speaker’s unhappiness, but the second stanza veers away from this gloomy tone as the speaker watches children playing nearby and a sailor singing in the bay. Suddenly, the “cold” and “gray” landscape of the poem transforms into a more lighthearted setting, one in which people go about their lives in a carefree manner. This illustrates just how little others are affected by the speaker’s grief—indeed, what the speaker sees as an irrecoverable loss, the outside world doesn’t even notice.
What does the speaker convey in the first stanza?
In the first stanza, the sea is battering the stones. The speaker appears frustrated that the sea can keep moving and making noise while he is unable to utter his thoughts. The sea’s loud roar, its ability to vent its energy, is something he lacks. The repetition of “break” aptly conveys the ceaseless motion of the waves, each wave reminding him of what he lacks.
What does the speaker express in the second stanza?
In the second stanza, Tennyson similarly expresses distance between himself and the happy people playing or singing where they are. They possess joy and fulfilment, whether together or alone, but he does not. The brother and sister have each other; the sailor has his boat; the speaker is alone. They have reason to voice pleasure, but he does not. One might sense envy here, but “O, well” also suggests that these carefree young people have losses yet to come.
What does the speaker express in the third stanza?
There are also impressive boats sailing through the bay, and the speaker envisions them passing into ideal, somewhat heavenly destinations. But watching these ships doesn’t distract the speaker from the memory of touching the hand of an acquaintance who no longer exists, whose voice has gone silent forever. Again the speaker is caught up in his internal thoughts, his memory of the mourned figure overshadowing what the speaker sees around him.
What kind of feeling does the fourth stanza evokes?
In the fourth stanza, the speaker returns to the breaking of waves on the craggy cliffs. The waves come again, again, again, hitting a wall of rock each time. But for him there is no return of the dead, just the recurring pain of loss. Why speak, why act? Nevertheless, both the sea and the speaker continue with their useless but repeated actions, as though there is no choice. The scene evokes a sense of inevitability and hopelessness.
Themes of the poem
-LOSS AND IMPERMANENCE
Everything around the speaker serves as a reminder that life is fleeting. Even the waves crashing against the shoreline represent this idea of impermanence, since these waves no longer exist in their original form once they’ve broken over the rocks. This reinforces the idea that nothing in the natural world lasts forever.
The speaker watches two children playing happily together and knows that someday their youth will be a thing of the past. Similarly, the young sailor singing nearby will someday be an old man, and the speaker will soon lose sight of the grand boats in the bay as they disappear from the horizon on their way to some unknown destination.
-THE DIFFICULTY TO MOVE ON
Despite the speaker’s grief, the world carries on like normal.
This dynamic emphasizes the fact that what the speaker feels in this moment is at odds with the simple reality that the rest of the world is proceeding unbothered. The anguish that feels so debilitating to the speaker doesn’t even register for other people, and this juxtaposition only heightens the speaker’s sorrow and makes it even harder to move on. Put another way, the speaker’s pain has to do with the fact that life has gone on even though the speaker has been immobilized by grief.
