American Modernism Research Paper

The Importance of Modernist Writing on American Society

Many interpretations can be inferred after reading T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land. At the time the short story was written, the Modernist Movement and Stream-of-Consciousness style narrative was a growing trend in early twentieth-century American writers. In more ways than one, Eliot’s writing style targets the roots of early American modernism with regard to depersonalization, outlining the extremes of fragmentation, despair, and separation; this focus directly relates to the insecure nature of the speaker, J. Alfred Prufrock. Similar themes of American modernism are revealed within The Waste Land when Eliot illustrates there is no true narrator;

In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Alfred is a man who seems to have no control on his mentality and succumbs to misery; he perceives his surroundings as muddled and tremendously fragmented. He mentions the state of his age repetitively, “With a bald spot in the middle of my hair”, “I grow old...I grow old…” (823, 40), (825, 120). I relate the idea of muddled mentality to the age to Prufrock: with old age comes confusion. Furthermore, he later states, “No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;”, when he clearly is very similar to him, such that he cannot decide on courses of action (824, 111). The man practically has no self-confidence; as he is a man of old age attempting to have relations with sophisticated women “talking of Michelangelo” (823,36). He further expresses this by comparing himself to “the Fool”: a jester in the Royal Court that nobody gives the time of day to (825, 119). Throughout trying to depict a streamline narrative of the depressing life of J. Alfred Prufrock, the poem is extremely fragmented leaving the reader

They encompass royal thrones, a bar in London, and even a desert; there seems to be no sense of organization for locations the poem is written. A reason behind such extreme settings could be these stories are more mental landscapes in one single observer, which make the understanding of The Waste Land a bit more realistic. Eliot depersonalizes Tiresias, the spectator in The Waste Land. “I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see” (832, 219-218). Tiresias is given no defined sexual identity and is blind to all things around, thus has a lost sense of identity in society. However, Tiresias is blind to the materialistic world, thus the person can see. This voice is merely an observer successful in seeing what the modern world has come to: a Waste Land. Eliot states, “Here is no water but only rock, Rock and no water and the sandy road” (835, 331-332). I believe Eliot refers this dry landscape to the mentality of modern men and how the blind Tiresias can see its true wickedness. Later, Eliot states, “There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home. It has no windows, and only the door swings” (836, 389-390). This could possibly suggest that this dry mentality of modern man influences cultural religious abandonment. The “wind’s home” further depicts the idea of desertion and that nobody inhabits the building; the only way into it is