After The Song of Songs passes its halfway point, it takes on a certain air of melancholy. The language which began the poem as luxurious and exuberant slowly becomes desperate and oppressive. The most shocking turn happens in Chapter 5 when the narrative strays from the disconnected dialogue between the two lovers and starts to include an entreaty to outsiders for help, sympathy and understanding. Most tragically, the story's protagonists, especially Rayati, find none of those things.
In an earlier chapter, Rayati was described as searching around her city for Dodi, asking the city guards for help. I conjectured that this moment was in fact Rayati's dream and we can see in Chapter 5 why this is so. This chapter is something of a wake-up call, a harsh moment of reality as a counterpoint to the grand, sweeping fantasies expressed by the young, would-be lovers. At the beginning of the chapter Dodi actually arrives at Rayati's front door. When he asks her to let him in, Rayati freezes instead. Despite all of her pining and her plans of escape, when actually faced with the moment when it all could come true she loses her nerve. By the time Rayati convinces herself to open the door, Dodi has already gone away.
Realizing what has happened, Rayati thoughtlessly rushes out to the city in search of Dodi. When the city guards find her, they beat her. Why would this be? Simply, because in that time and place if a young woman walked the streets alone at night she was assumed to be a prostitute. It likely wouldn't have helped that Rayati would be wandering around searching for a man who wasn't a family member. Compared to Rayati's dream, this is an extremely dark moment. It is a fantasy turned into a nightmare, the happy ending of the dream replaced with Rayati injured and alone, begging those around her to help her find a man she may never see again.
The only response Rayati gets from anyone she asks about Dodi can basically be summed up as "What's so special about this guy? Why not just find somebody else?" Though Rayati goes on to describe Dodi in the same swooning language as she did in private in previous chapters, there's something sour about this latest litany. For the first time in the story, we're forced to see Rayati for what she truly is. She's a very young, very inexperienced girl who relies a bit too much on her own flights of fancy. She's rash, impractical and not nearly as brave as she imagines herself to be while locked up in her room at night. The Song of Songs is most certainly not so cynical that it aims to dismiss the very concept of young, romantic love. At times it does quite the opposite. Still, things aren't nearly as rosy and pleasant in this story as they seemed at the outset.