Exploring Grief in Tennyson’s ‘Break break break’ Emily Ashenden 12th Grade

‘Break break break’ is a poem that was published in 1842, during the early Victorian epoch. It explores Tennyson’s feelings of loss concerning the death of his friend, Arthur Hallam. The poem syncretises the perpetual cycle of nature with the speaker’s bitter desire for the world to stop. The purpose of this poem could be to unite the masses’ experience of grief, thus providing comfort in the knowledge that most individuals struggle to cope with tumultuous and taxing feelings of bereavement. However, Tennyson's speaker may also be confronting the idea that loss itself can have challenging effects on rationality.

Before delving into the argument presented, it is important to define ‘rationality’ in order to avoid mystification of the conveyance of various meanings. V.B Shneider suggests one should be aware of context that definitions have emerged out of, especially following the ‘rationality phenomena’ of Anglo-Saxon social philosophy and the philosophy of science. After examining dictionary definitions, he concludes that rationality is ‘reasonably based normativity which guarantees an expedient process of activity.’ However, the question of what ‘normal’ is consequently follows. He proposes that there are two principle types of...