In Matthew Arnold’s poem “Dover Beach,” the sea transitions to a place of eternal unhappiness, ultimately mirroring the desolation and downfall of the human existence.  The speaker’s mindset in the poem quickly transitions from a sense of optimism to a complete loss of faith in the world; this ultimately pairs with the relationship between the sea and human emotion.

The waves of the sea are very uncertain in the way they move, resembling the uncertainty of humans’ actions which bring the world to its ultimate failure.  As the poem begins, the speaker describes the waves as calm and tranquil.  However, very early in the poem the speaker’s perspective on the sea changes abruptly to something quite pessimistic; the sea suddenly becomes dark, vast and sad.  The speaker continuously advocates in each stanza how drastically the world is moving into terrible times. With each line, he advocates the discontent he feels with the world around him.  It might be said that the poem is completely desolate; however, even though his consciousness of reality around him is very dark, it is also sensible and unforgettable in regards to the transition the human race is going through.

The world in his eyes has transitioned into a faithless place that is unprotected from any wrath that may ensue, something worse than ever before. In this poem, the speaker also advocates that, like the woefulness the sea brings that seems to stay prominent, that sadness in humanity is the only perpetual aspect that humans experience; everything else is merely temporary.

The poem portrays the eminence of sadness, emphasizing the fact that happiness does not exist any longer in Dover Beach.  The theme of sadness and hardship resides under any remotely uplifting piece of the poem, slowly engulfing the happiness until it is completely gone. The speaker has completely given up on the world around him, allowing no incentive to proceed happily in the world.

The imagery of the poem not only reveals that the loss of belief and happiness are merely unfortunate, but it also conveys the void that it left behind.  The speaker does not talk about the misfortunes of the world sulking about what has changed.  There is a sense of concern for where the world is heading, as well as a feeling of disappointment in the ignorance of humanity altogether. The comparison to the tremulous, roaring, crashing waves now relates to the mayhem and destruction occurring all around them. The curtain has lifted and revealed the true ghastliness of the world they live in.

I think this entire piece is very factual in the perspective of someone who has no faith in the world. Every aspect of the setting and ideas that are formed are completely plausible and understandable in regards to someone watching a place they once loved turn into a place that no longer holds that significance anymore.

The speaker relates the unhappiness of humankind to the motion of the sea—unpredictable yet prevailing. Even with the aspect of love in the poem, the components of misery, fear, suffering, and faithlessness navigate the story in its entirety.  The flux of emotions in humans end up staying with a quality of negativity that, in the end, reigns over the world that was once faithful and happy.  The speaker’s steady perspective on the failure of the world is what drives this poem forward in such a pressing manner.  With all of the darkness and overall faithlessness, it truly discloses the horrors of humankind and the surrounding world.  

While Sir Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “The Sailor Boy” is considered to be fictional, largely because of its involvement of fantastical elements, I believe the poem is rooted in the struggles Tennyson experienced in his childhood and adolescence, giving the fictional some non-fiction influences. The Sailor Boy recounts the story of a boy running away from home, and setting off to sea on his own. While some claim that the boy does this due to boredom or longing for adventure, looking at the piece from a more non-fictional perspective, the boy’s motivation can be interpreted as a need to escape due to a feeling of helplessness in his own home.

Tennyson was born the fourth of twelve children, and lived in England during the 1800s. Much of his family was plagued by mental illness, including his father, who was an abusive alcoholic, as well as several of his siblings. Every one of his siblings had a mental breakdown at some point in his or her life, some leading to drug use, and one to hospitalisation(“Lord”). Being raised in such a household would create stress, uncertainty, and a feeling of helplessness in one’s own life. These types of feelings are portrayed throughout “The Sailor Boy,” and I believe are a reflection of Tennyson’s adolescent emotions.  The poem was published in 1861, making him 52 at the time of its publication, which would make the poem a reminiscent expression of Tennyson’s decision to leave home at age 18. While Tennyson did not leave to become a sailor, he did leave to face the challenges of the outside world on his own, much like the speaker of the poem.

The speaker, like Tennyson, feels he has no control over his own life, and is helpless to stop the misfortunes that plague his family. This drives his need to escape home, as is evidenced by the lines, “But I will never more endure/ To sit with empty hands at home” (Tennyson 15-16). His hands represent action, or an ability to do something for others- as in the phrase “to lend a helping hand.” He feels there is nothing he can do for those at home, that he is useless in helping his family. Tennyson chose the word “endure,” meaning “to undergo (as a hardship) especially without giving in”(“Endure”). Doing nothing is not simply an unfortunate effect of his boring life; it is a hardship- something he must endure. He must sit and watch his family fall apart, time and time again, helpless to stop it. This helplessness, in part, convinces the speaker he must leave his home and go out to sea, or in Tennyson’s case to the outside world. He must seek a place where he has a say in what happens in his life, and where he is not doomed “to sit with empty hands” (Tennyson 16). This evidences a more non-fictional view of the poem, and shows it may, in fact, be based more in fact than in fiction.

“Endure.” Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 09 May 2016.

“Lord Alfred Tennyson.” Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 09 May 2016.

Tennyson, Sir Alfred Lord. “The Sailor Boy.” Poetry Lovers’ Page. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 May 2016.

The stories in Russell Banks’s collection, “A Permanent Member of the Family,” are tied together by a common theme of divorce. The story from which the collection draws its title is told from the perspective of a father whose family, many years prior, went through divorce. The story serves as the father’s “reclaiming” of a story that happened thirty-five years ago, and has become somewhat of a “family legend.” The story in question is of the circumstances which came about after the divorce and how they, inadvertently, lead to the father’s accidental killing of the family dog. While the story was published as a work of fiction, it is likely that the author used personal experience in writing the story. Upon first reading, I questioned how fictional this story actually was, particularly after finding that Banks, seventy-three when the story was first published, would be a similar age to the narrator. Upon further research, Banks also was raised in the place which the story is set, “a shabbily quaint village in southern New Hampshire.” (Banks 81) Therefore, though the story remains officially “fiction,” there were definitely elements of fact drawn from in its creation, as I believe there are in every work. Furthermore, the story’s, and collection’s, themes of divorce and family is something that the author is intimately familiar with. In an interview with The Washington Post, Banks stated that “one thing that has struck me through the years, first as a child of divorce and then as a divorced man myself…is the incredible, powerful need we have for family, its ability to provide us with strength and intimacy, support and love — and then, on the other hand, the incredible fragility of family.” (Burns) These are precisely the struggles which the narrator of “A Permanent Member of the Family” faces alongside his loved ones. The story brings to light the need we have for family through the interaction between a husband, wife, and their children after being separated, even if only a few houses down the roles. It illustrates the “fragility of family” through the vehicle of Sarge, the family dog, who refuses to stay at the house of the mother, and follows the daughters to their father’s house every time they make the trip down the street. In the words of the narrator, Sarge “functioned in our newly disassembled family as the last remaining link to our preseparation…to a time of innocence when all of us…still believed in the permanence of our family unit, our pack.” (Banks 86) Given the connection between Banks’s responses in the interview and themes developed in the narration, it can be inferred that Banks drew much from his own life and personal experience when creating this story. His young life as a child of divorced parents, and adult live as a divorcee himself, gave him insight into the characters of not only the narrator, but the daughters as well, and therefore allowed nonfictional elements to appear in and enhance this fictional story.

Banks, Russell.”A Permanent Member of the Family.” The O. Henry Prize Stories. Ed. Laura
Furman. Comp. Tessa Hadley, Kristen Iskandrian, and Michael Parker. New York:
Vintage Anchor, 2015. 80-91. Print. Ser. 2015.

Brown, Wesley. “Who to Blame, Who to Forgive.” Nytimes.com. The New York Times, 10 Sept.
1989. Web. 9 May 2016.

Burns, Carole. “Q&A with Russell Banks about the Special Quality of Short Stories.”
Washington Post. The Washington Post, 26 Nov. 2013. Web. 09 May 2016.

In her poem, In the Dream, Jenny Johnson intertwines the fictional aspect of events as experienced while dreaming with nonfictional events of the speaker’s past. The opening line of the first couplet of In the Dream, “I was alone in a dyke bar we’d traversed before,” gives readers an immediate sense of the speaker’s tone and attitude, using dyke as a not entirely socially-accepted form of lesbian, and places the poem within a seemingly realistic setting. “I was alone in…” represents both the dreamlike-state titling the poem and a realistic life event, perhaps experienced by the speaker.

The speaker’s time spent in the “dyke bar” begins to shift from realistic and believable to the fictional state of a dream, as it states, “or maybe it was in a way all our dives/merging together suddenly as one intergalactic composite,/one glitter-spritzed black hole,” presenting the poem with its first dip into an outer-space, fantasy like fictional setting. Readers’ time spent within the “intergalactic composite” begins to intertwine the dream’s setting with imagery of a nonfiction experience, “managing to forever stabilize in space/ without a landlord scheming to shut the place down,” claiming the speaker’s time in the bar is at a standstill, particular and characteristic of dreams, yet being identified as landlord-less, tying a nonfiction aspect to the standstill within the speaker’s dream.

The aspects of the bar begin to present the most recognizable dreamlike features as the poem continues, “but the room/ had no end and no ceiling.” “Maybe the tables were spinning, too. I can’t be sure.,” but are yet again accompanied by aspects of true-to-life experience at a bar, “I could see all of our friends or exes” “three people on bar stools, who were straight/ or closeted? but more importantly angry,” continually intertwining and blurring the lines between the poem’s fictional and nonfictional elements while beginning to prepare the poem for its return to an outer space imagery and setting.

The “three people on bar stools” begin to exhibit unfriendliness, as they are “not here to love/with jawlines set to throw epithets like darts/that might stick or knick or flutter past/ as erratically as they were fired./ You could say their hostility was a swirl/ nebulous as gas and dust,” yet again intertwining a realistic exhibition of “hostility” with a dreamlike-outer space feel and setting.

In the Dream begins its conclusion with perhaps the most obvious nonfictional element, a description of an elementary school event as a comparison to the “hostility” of those on the “bar stools,” “Like how when I was shoved in grade school/ on the blacktop in my boy jeans/ the teacher asked me if I had a strawberry/ because the wound was fresh as jam, glistening/ like pulp does after the skin of a fruit is/ peeled back clean with a knife,” recounting specific details and dialogue and furthering the speaker’s inclusion of nonfiction.

In the Dream strays from its use of couplets in one instance where the speaker asks, “I said: Do you realize where you are?,” a question enhancing the intertwining nonfiction and fiction ideas present within the poem and suggesting that the element of confusion regarding the factual basis of the poem provides a question of location touching on both the retelling of a childhood event and the setting of the bar within the speaker’s dream.

Elements of both fiction and nonfiction are evident within Johnson’s In the Dream, and work to enhance the intertwining of a dream and factual events experienced by the speaker.

“Love Innings” is a nonfiction story written by Devin Kelly. It uses the idea of a baseball game as an objective correlative to talk about different aspects of life, including growing up and romantic relationships. The narrator sits through the innings of the game, which are used to section the piece, and grapples with inner struggles as he comes to term with his recently ended relationship. One of the strongest analogies to baseball to life, in my opinion, comes in the section “3^rd Inning” when Kelly writes, “It is a game laced with imperfection, one you can only master when you realize that certain things are not in your control” and goes on to show how a well-hit ball can still be caught and a weak grounder can somehow manage to evade the fielder for a bloop single. I think that is a very important point in the piece because it connects baseball to something larger.

When talking about fact vs. nonfiction, there are certain craft elements that lend itself to a nonfiction reading. First, there are clearly given names of places, such as “Hagerstown, Maryland” in the beginning, which are characteristic of personal essays. The content of the story reads like a true narrative. The reader is supposed to, and does, believe that this narrator is sitting at this minor league baseball game with his father and his brother, and that he recently got out of a pretty serious relationship. The observing nature of the narrator also contributes to the sense of nonfiction that pervades the piece. He watches the Little League kids, the boy with his mother in front of him, and the trucker who by the end of the game has consumed six beers (we know that because the narrator has counted).

On some Facebook photo that was shared by a friend who is an English teacher, there was a mug with the saying “Creative Nonfiction: True Stories, Well Told.” At first I laughed, thinking that was such a short, concise definition that must be too easy for all the discussion we’ve spent analyzing the differences between fact, nonfiction, and fiction. However, the more I thought about this saying, the more I saw it as being a pretty decent definition. When I think of straight facts, newspaper articles come to mind, and this essay is not written like a newspaper article. If it was, it would read something like “On a June day in Maryland, the named narrator attended a local baseball game, where the home team lost (insert score) but his mind was distracted with thoughts of his ex-girlfriend…” “Love Innings isn’t written that way, even though all those events I mentioned before do take place. Creative nonfiction enters a realm where the aesthetics of the story are just as important, if not a little more so than the true facts. Sometimes facts need to be sacrificed for the sake of the piece. For example, the narrator’s mother might not have run away on the family the way she did, but including it in the story like that shows character while also establishing the importance of baseball in the narrator’s life. This example of nonfiction really is a “true story, well told” even if that is a simple definition.

Making sense of it all …

When it comes to categorizing writing, people oftentimes like to sort them into two categories: fiction and non-fiction. “Fiction means fake, and non-fiction means not-fake,” my third grade teacher would always remind us after our readings. However, as we have learned, these terms are not so black and white. There can be both fictional and non-fictional elements in a single piece. Sometimes the specific actions are fictional in that they did not really happen, and yet there could still be a non-fictional aspect to them in that they were based off of real events that happened to the author, only these events were perhaps exaggerated or altered to make a better story.

When you bring poetry into the mix, the issue expands further. It is a commonly accepted notion that poetry is neither fiction nor non-fiction; rather, it is a category on its own that can contain fictional and non-fictional elements. I would like to push back slightly on that notion and argue that poetry is simply a matter of convention. Unlike prose writing where the words go from margin to margin, poetry has less stricter forms and more freedom with the arrangement of things, including white spaces and structural appearance. I have heard arguments that all poetry must be fiction, yet this cannot be true because many poems are autobiographical and deal with real events that someone experienced. The greater message here is that it is difficult and a bit futile to assign a label to a piece of writing, because I think that all writing contains some degree of truth, whether that truth applies to the reader, the author, or the speaker and other characters. What makes writing engaging is incorporating that element of reality, even if the reality is hidden by a thick layer of nonsense and absurdity.

This brings me to perhaps the greatest nonsense poem in the English-speaking world, The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, which was included in his novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. While the majority of the poem is fiction in that it is made up, it still succeeds in incorporating non-fictional elements that bring the reader to reality. Carroll’s is famous for his fantastical and whimsical writing, his ability to fashion made-up worlds that are so absurd yet so real to the reader. Indeed, there is a layer of complexity in Carroll’s work that appeals to all ages. Although the rhyming, nonsense words like “galumphing” (20), and made-up creatures like the “Jubjub bird” (7) and the“Bandersnatch” (8) make the poem feel like a children’s book your parents would read to you as a kid, there is much more beneath the surface. Carroll blends fiction and reality to make a sophisticated point about the real world, about facing one’s demons and taking the hero’s journey.

Upon reading the first stanza of the poem, the reader might feel as though he or she is reading another language:

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

  And the mome raths outgrabe.

Carroll uses language as his chief means of conveying the feeling of being in a different, completely nonsensical world. From the very beginning, he is trying to give the reader the impression that he is trying to say something serious; the structure of the lines in the opening stanza feel like traditional, non-fictional poetry, yet the several nonsense words are unusual to us. In making up words and creating portmanteaus using actual words (e.g. slithy = slimy + lithe), Carroll succeeds in creating a fantastical world that almost feels like our own. Through his fictional elements, we are able to find a sense of non-fictional reality.

The Jabberwocky is an absurd poem that mirrors the absurdity of the world we live in, filled with unknowns and uncertainty. Each one of our lives mirrors the life of the son in the poem, who comes face to face with something he fears and, in the end, vanquishes it. The non-fictional world is full of Jabberwocks and the “vorpal blades” (18) we need to slay them. The fantastical aspects of the poem that makes it feel like fiction serves the purpose of revealing the very real human curiosity and fear of the real world.

“[as freedom is a breakfastfood]” is a poem written by ee cummings that embodies his eccentric style of writing, which I find incredibly interesting. Its meaning is not very straightforward, and honestly after multiple readings, I’m sure there are levels to this poem that I have yet to understand or explore. However, I believe that the craft lends itself to the ideas of fact vs. nonfiction well. For example, I think there are factual events that sparked the writing of this poem (although I’m not sure on exactly what they were- there are some thoughts that it was written about the Great Depression, but I can’t be sure about that). The concepts of the ups and downs of life are quite real, there is no dispute for that, but I believe that the style of this poem lends itself to a very whimsical reading, which I think is more closely related to nonfiction, even fiction, because there aren’t clearly defined actions with specific details.

The rhyming and slanted rhyming throughout the poem contributes to the sense of fun, as does the seemingly absurd comparisons that make up the majority of the piece. For example, “and every finger is a toe” lends itself to an almost childlike reading, putting the reader into a world of play and fantasy. This particular reading can also be supported by the made up words of “dingsters” and “dong” in the third stanza. Also, the repeated use of conjunctions throughout the poem makes me think of a kid telling a story and telling every single detail of it. The idea of childlike imagination blurs the line often blurs the line between fact and fiction, where nonfiction lies, and I think this piece mirrors that. This effect is also achieved in the typical, and in my opinion classic, style of ee cummings. The lack of punctuation or capitalization again reminds me of a younger, more naïve narrator (although the ideas and thoughts in the poem seem to come from a much older, more experienced person). There is a contrast here that I think is very natural for cummings’ poetry. There are many times where I have difficulty with it, yet he remains my favorite poet. Another technique that leads to the absurdity of this poem, leaning it away from a factual reading, is the inverted syntax. Certain lines of this poem need to be read more than once to be understood. For example, the line “or molehills are from mountains made” uses very odd grammar.

Finally, at the “line level” there is one line in this poem that is directly related to the difference between fact and nonfiction, even though it doesn’t sway me to believe that the poem is written as definitively one or the other. The second line of the poem “or truth can live with right or wrong” reminds me of a discussion we had in class. Our definitions of nonfiction included the idea that sometimes the events described didn’t actually need to have happened that exact way, but it just needed to be believable that they could have. I think that interesting idea is played with here by cummings. Of course, in such a specific discussion “truth” might not be synonymous with “fact” but nevertheless I thought it was an important line to address on this blog.

The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories is a collection of pieces of the late Marina Keegan’s creative writing. Readers are prefaced with the sectioning of Keegan’s works, separated into two genre-specific halves. “The Ingenue,” a short story telling of a young couple’s waning relationship, is contained in the book’s fiction section. “The Ingenue” reads as a short story simply due to its preceding label. Reading the piece and lacking the knowledge of its basis in fiction proves a different experience.

Keegan recounts specific incidents preceding the narrator’s split from her boyfriend through comprehensive characterization via dialogue and description. The piece’s opening line, “The biggest fight in my relationship with Danny regards his absurd claim that he invented the popular middle school phenomenon of saying ‘cha-cha-cha’ after each phrase of the Happy Birthday song-an idea his ingenious sixth-grade brain allegedly spawned in a New Jersey Chuck E. Cheese and watched spread rapidly across 1993 America with an unprecedented rapidity,” utilizes the first person perspective to immediately introduce Danny and create a personal atmosphere- one containing a seemingly realistic disagreement between Danny and his narrating girlfriend.

Keegan continues her piece with minimal, yet effective descriptions of characters, mirroring the structure of a non-fictional conversation. “There were six of us. Danny, the bearded Noah, the delicate Eric, the old artistic director, and Olivia, whom I hated,” realistically describes the story’s major characters and presents readers a believable and seemingly factual insight into their fictional backgrounds.

Keegan’s use of dialogue also adds to the nonfictional quality her short story presents, providing conversations realistic in nature. The dialogue,“ ‘Show her the one with the square penis!’ Olivia laughed, and we all lunged up a banister less staircase… ‘It’s not that funny,’ Ricky, the artistic director, was as drunk as the rest of us,” provides witty banter and furthers the visual of the story’s beach house setting (“banister less staircase”). Although a nonfiction piece would most likely eliminate the reminders of character descriptions within the dialogue tags (“…the artistic director”), the dialogue proves realistic and unadjusted from a factual conversation.

Keegan furthers the seemingly nonfictional quality of her piece with self-description, displayed in a passage recounting the similarities between the narrator and her boyfriend, “We were so compatible, really. Really just so compatible in a number of ways. We had the same favorite band, the same exact one, and I used to act too, in college. We bonded over this at a party were we first met- some mutual friend of a friend and I had walked into an unlocked bathroom to reveal him rinsing with the apartment owner’s Listerine.” The use of repetition (“…really. Really just so compatible…”), (“…the same favorite band, the same exact one…”), fragment sentences, (“Really just so compatible in a number of ways”), and detailed retelling of a party, conveys the feeling of an actual conversation the narrator may have had. The conversation acts as if it is convincing an outside party (or perhaps the speaker herself), of the rationale behind the decision to date Danny, enhancing the realistic quality of the piece.

“The Ingenue” makes use of the first person perspective, minimal and effective character descriptions, and characterization via outer and inner dialogue, to create a seemingly nonfiction piece. Reading “The Ingenue” without prior knowledge of its basis in fiction would most likely result in the believing of the piece’s nonfiction nature. Prefacing the piece with a fiction label prevents readers from experiencing the piece on a more personal level, and reading this piece without its preceding label may provide readers a reading more applicable and relevant. “The Ingenue” creates an atmosphere that seems to be based in nonfiction and would be assumed, most likely, that its basis is in fact, had it not been prefaced with a fiction label.

In an initial reading of Duggan’s poem, “The Tides Run up the Wairau,” the poem appears to fiction through the use of poetic language. The poem tells the story about a woman dealing with a troublesome love, and she compares this love to that of a raging body of water. This comparison initially gives the poem it’s fiction qualities, however, on a closer look, there is fact in this fiction.

Love appears in the forms of Cook Strait and the Wairau River, each having prominent roles in the poem, “The Tides Run up the Wairau”, by Eileen Duggan. The presence of these bodies of water are significant to the poem because they represent heartbreak and longing; difficulties of love. Despite the poetic and symbolic meanings of water, the comparison of water to love has elements of truth. Duggan argues in the poem that the harsh bodies of water symbolize these emotions of love. The first recognizes the similarities between the Wairau’s difficult headwaters and a speaker’s inability to openly express her love, while the second points out the relationship between the Wairau River and Cook Strait, in which love is equivalent to a river fighting against the tides of the sea. Cook Strait, located at the southernmost point of the northern island of New Zealand, is considered to be the roughest and most unpredictable body of water in the world. It feeds into the Wairau River, whose headwaters are difficult to traverse.

The use of water shows how love comparable to the tides of an ocean or a river: gentle and and calming at times, but also rough and difficult, and seemingly impossibly to fight. The speaker of the poem seems to be addressing a lover whom she express her love for. However, this lover refuses to leave her, and the speaker cannot seem to fight off the lover’s pursuits. Here, this supports Duggan’s first observation about love. The general idea shows a conflicted heart and how the speaker is struggling through inner turmoil with a persistent lover. Just like a river’s unpredictable current, so is the speaker’s journey through love.

For the second case, the Wairau symbolizes the speaker while Cook Strait symbolizes the lover. The river, despite it’s own strong currents, cannot fight against the might of the ocean. The figurative meaning reveals the speaker who, like the river, cannot fight against the powerful tides of love. The idea that love is easy is a misconceived concept that has plagued the minds of many, where it is, in fact, the polar opposite. “The Tides Run up the Wairau,” is substantial proof that love comes with a variety of problems, and that not all of them are conquerable. 

“The tides run up the Wairau,” makes reference to Cook Strait, the ocean in which the river feeds into. The river fights against the Strait’s tides, and this conflict also reflects the conflict that is occurring in the Speaker’s heart. Her heart is “running salt,” which entails that she is crying and heartbroken over this situation. In the second stanza, this conflict becomes evident when the speaker says, “I cannot love you”, however, the lover’s “tide of love,” is persistent, and the speaker cannot fight it. The emotional pain that affects the speaker, such as the memories of him which linger in her mind, implies that difficulties lie in the past. She uses the phrase, “salt of pain”, to reveal to readers how the lover’s presence and affection causes this inner turmoil, like rubbing salt in a wound. On a closer look, the Wairau river in “The Tides Run up the Wairau” can also represent the state of mind of the speaker, and how weak and hopeless she feels towards the lover, whose love is represented by the sea’s powerful tides. She cannot fight the lover’s affections, which is like the river fighting the tide.  Concluding the said tale of love, the speaker weeps because fighting this lover’s affections for her is like a river fighting against the tides of the sea.

The line, “For though I cannot love you,” is interesting because it focuses on the mental state of the speaker. It is already known that the speaker, despite having obvious attractions towards her lover, cannot seem to express her love for him. In fact, even though she is heartbroken in doing so, she fights against his tides of love. Her inability to tell the man she loves her feelings reveals to readers that maybe, she doesn’t know how to. This questions the idea of expressed and unexpressed love. Sometimes love is truly felt but cannot be expressed through words. A love that has no words appears in many pieces of romantic literature, as well as in real life. This type of love is seen throughout Duggan’s poem. The speaker obviously has feelings for the lover, since her heart is crying for him. However, there is some element that seems to prevent her from expressing her love, instead causing her to fight her lover away. The speaker, since she cannot openly express her love, tries to push her lover away to protect him from the outside element. In this case, she is expressing her love by trying to protect him. The speaker loves the lover so much that she’s willing to sacrifice a potential future with him to protect him from an outside presence. The type of love the speaker of Duggan’s poem is going through is tormented love. The torment she goes through is both internal and external. She fights with herself to push the lover away, despite loving him, as well as fighting with the lover himself. We see tormented love in real life, which is also another reason why this poem has non fiction aspects to it.

Duggan, in her poem “The Tides Run up the Wairau,” gives an accurate definition of an aspect of love with her symbolic use of turbulent bodies of water. The use of the Wairau River and Cook Strait to symbolize the struggles in love helps readers understand the concept of a tormented love. The inner turmoil the speaker goes through, as well as the fight to push away a lover to protect him provides the definition that love is not easy and does have it’s problems. Like the ocean, love is gentle, but also dangerous.