The tone that Alicia Ostriker’s poem “The Dogs at Live Oak Beach, Santa Cruz” establishes might be described as envious. In the first line of the poem, Ostriker sets up a juxtaposition between the speaker’s world and the world of the dogs. The dogs' world, which consists of “absolute innocence” and “nothing but joy,” seems to be the focus of the speaker’s longing. The imagery of the dogs chasing after sticks and tennis balls suggests that the dogs have something that the speaker lacks. The speaker, watching these dogs, appears to wish that they could pursue pleasure with such purity.
Taking into account the speaker’s covetous attitude towards the ebullient dogs, one might also say that the poem creates a melancholy tone. It’s possible to claim that there’s sadness at the center of Ostriker’s poem. For the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, melancholy feelings are triggered by a loss that people are unable to fully figure out. They can’t say exactly what they lost, but they know that they lost something, which, in turn, causes them sorrow.
The speaker arguably establishes a melancholy tone because they have lost something that they can’t specifically identify. They come close to identifying it by talking about innocence and joy, but innocence and joy are large concepts that could mean an array of possible things.
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