All in All

All in All

In every piece of work, there are always two sides to a coin and so this precept is true in the poem, "All in All," which was written by Alfred Lord Tennyson. This poem is the quintessence of how antonymous words, when used rhetorically, can actually be synonymous in nature and how there truly can be infinite meanings postulated for them.

In the poem, Tennyson tries to express a binary opposition when he states, "Faith and unfaith can ne'er be equal powers" (2). It is in this line wherein there are two words that are antonymous to each other: "faith" and "unfaith." Here, he tries to tell the person to whom he is professing his love that these two concepts are unequal, but, if one were to look at this from another aspect, he could see that, without those people who are unfaithful, faith would not exist; therefore it is not possible to have faith without unfaith and it is also not possible to have unfaith without faith. It can be concluded that each distinctive concept feeds off the other to form one.

In Tennyson's argument, the superior side is faith because, with faith brings trust and, with trust brings love and respect. If a relationship were to be without trust, it would be without faith and therefore it would be without love. It can be assumed then that, in the line, "In Love, if Love be Love, if Love be ours," Tennyson is trying to limn to his lover the dichotomy of love and faith while showing how they are one as well (1). "If Love be Love, if Love be ours" is Tennyson's way of saying to his lover that, if this be the true definition of Love, and if it actually be "theirs," then these two concepts of faith and unfaith can never be equal because Love cannot be Love without faith and, without unfaith, in essence, Love cannot actually exist (1).

Tennyson also tries to personify the concept of Love by capitalizing the "L" in his poem. This seems to humanize this word as though the concept were really he and his lover coalesced so to speak. In an almost ontological sense, Tennyson wants the reader to infer that his Love for this person is as it would be if it were a living, breathing organism.

Tennyson further deliberates on his own concept of Love and his rationale of faith and unfaith in the line, "Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all" (3). Here, the words, "in aught" are being used obsolescently to mean, "at all." Since "in all" means altogether and "at all" means in any which way, there are therefore two different sets of binary oppositions in this line: "unfaith/faith" and "in all/ at all." Tennyson is once again dichotomizing his version of love and faith to his lover. He is trying to limn to her that unfaith, in any which way one can perceive it, is really that person's fervent wanting of faith altogether. It completely contradicts rational perceptions of love and faith because one could also look at faith as being nonexistent in any which way without unfaith altogether.

Tennyson further contradicts and belies the normal perceptions of love and faith throughout the poem. In the middle stanzas, he has described their Love as something almost fetid, for instance, when he says, "Or little pitted speck of garner'd fruit/ That rotting inward slowly moulders all" (8-9). In these two lines, their Love is being described as the speck on a fruit that is rotten and that, over time, that speck grows larger and goes deeper into the fruit until it have rotted out the entire inside of the fruit. This is supposed to portray how their Love is almost cancerous when it starts out and that the cancer that is their Love will only spread until, in the end, their Love be completely destroyed. This is completely contradictory to what most people believe love to be, which is that of being eternal. Tennyson is describing their Love, in these lines, as a finite concept, which seems to go against the rationale of his whole argument regarding love and faith in the first stanza of this poem.

Tennyson further portrays more binary opposition in the lines, "It is not worth keeping: let it go/ But shall it? answer, darling, answer, no/ And trust me not at all or all in all" (10-12). Here, the pronoun, "it" is referring to their Love. He is telling his lover, in line eight, that their Love is not worth keeping so she should let it go, but he contradicts himself, in line nine, when he asks her to say that their Love is worth keeping and to rail against letting their Love dissipate. Finally, in line ten, Tennyson asks her to trust him altogether or not at all, which is somewhat a pun on his original version of love and faith. Here, he is actually trying to say that, if they have Love, then they have faith for one another and she will therefore trust him in toto, but if they should not have Love, then they do not have faith for one another and she will therefore not trust him. In essence, with their Love, like any Love, there is no middle ground—it is, in fact, all in all or nothing at all. It is a pun on his original version of love and faith because he had stated prior that "Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all" and now he is stating that she must choose one concept or the other. His original version had these two concepts seemingly immixed as one, but now they seem to be two separate entities and trust appears to be paramount to preserving the sanctity of their Love.

As a reader, it is important to look at different sides of the coin when dealing with different genres of work. In many instances, one meaning is not necessarily all that exist. Each work may have multiple meanings and seeking out those multiple meanings is paramount to understanding just what the author wants his reader to infer.