Pride In Poetry

“And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin is pride that apes humility” (Coleridge). Pride effects everyone and everything. It effects the way that we live, the way that we read and the way that we go about things. It hinders people and events. T.S. Eliot seems to have some experience with this word in context. In his two poems, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “The Journey of the Magi”, there seems to be strong senses of pride and regret of an unfulfilled life. They each make a tour through points in their lives, which seem to have been hard times. Pride puts a bad outlook on life, just like it says in the quote by Coleridge. It is a big problem that drapes over the heads of human kind and seems to be a big thing in the eyes of the speakers in the poems. It is a hard thing to get past and it hurts you very easily. If you live your life in fear, it may end before you can do what you wanted to do with your life. If Eliot’s poems are doing anything, they are telling people to get past their insecurities and go for it. Eliot could be using himself as an example as someone whom hung up his insecurities and succeeded. Pride is shown a lot in these poems, and it shows why someone should get past it.

In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, a dead man is going through his life that has been filled with regret. The poem is an ode to Dante’s book, The Divine Comedy, in particular the part entitled Inferno. This is shown in the epilogue of the poem. There is a quote that says, “If I thought my answer were to one who ever could return to the world, this flame should shake no more, but since none ever did return alive from this depth, if what I hear be true without fear of infamy I answer thee” (Manganiello 18). In Inferno, the speaker overcomes his initial reluctance to reveal his identity when he takes Dante for one of the damned like himself, confined to hell for eternity. The speaker believed that his story would never be told on earth. When he finally announces what it is that happened to him, the words express “a hidden pride for having once achieved earthly renown and an active desire to vindicate his reputation” (19).