Starting with pre-school, we are taught how to be proper. We talk with surface-level pleasantries ["how are you?" "I'm great."] and proceed with the sequiturs we are expected to follow. Take this away from us, and we are flailing fish on dry land. Furthermore, drifting off this path to one with high risk [high reward is often diminished by the risk of what others think] scares us. In “The Hollow Men” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” T.S Eliot muses about how modern men and women are trapped by modern society. Moreover, Eliot chooses to create a bleak piece, not displaying hope in the poems, in order to make the reader realize the need for change. In “The Hollow Men,” the men are stuck doing nothing - living endlessly with repetitive actions …show more content…
Alfred Prufrock,” Eliot paints how modern people fear “human voices, ” to the extent that they reach a moral paralysis. Modernity makes everyone “a patient etherised upon a table.” Every action can be captured [beware social media]. They are powerless against that monster. When we are powerless, we feel paralyzed and stuck. Instead of doing something different [an individualistic society they say, yet we only care what the “group” thinks of us], we fall back to safe places that everyone understands. We find our “room [where] the women come and go/Talking of Michelangelo.” Prufrock asks himself if he “dare/ Disturb the universe.” Disturbance brings attention and sneers, so Prufrock decides “in a minute.” He pushes it off for tomorrow. Lives are spent and “measured out..with coffee spoons.” In other words: Safe. Small. Known. This leaves them dependent on the ephemeral safe places [flight-flight-flight never fight]. Modern men have the capability of disconnecting ourselves from any challenges [just close the tab. Do it later] because they are plagued by “decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.” This overthinking prevents progress. And without progress humanity is
Corso spent much of his early life between foster parents and prison, the latter being where he was introduced to poetry. Now credited as a key member of the “Beat Generation”, a group of poets who were opposed to social conformity and the traditional forms of poetry, Corso typically wrote poetry “on serious philosophical issues” (Olson 53). On the other hand, Eliot’s upbringing was more traditional, where he attended Harvard and went on to become a figure of immense influence in the literary world. Eliot’s first major poetic publication, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, bears many resemblances to Corso’s postmodern poem Marriage, a poem written to criticize the philosophical issues associated with marriage. To begin with, Corso’s Marriage opens with two rhetorical questions that the speaker attempts to answer throughout the course of the poem.
“The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot is a poem of struggle for meaning amongst the meaningless. T.S. Eliot shows the reader how in this day and age society is becoming less and less active and beginning to become more careless in the way in which we live and behave, as represented throughout the poem. It brings out all of our worlds weaknesses and flaws. Eliot brings out the fact that the human race is disintegrating. We are compared to as hollow men with no emotions, cares, and nothing inside. Hollow men all look different in some way, but inside we are all the same. We shift in whatever direction we are being blown in. In The Hollow Men, by T.S. Eliot examines the absence of spiritual guidance, lack of communication between individuals, and absence of direction of outstanding and pro founding leadership.
T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” tells the speaker’s story through several literary devices, allowing the reader to analyze the poem through symbolism, character qualities, and allusions that the work displays. In this way, the reader clearly sees the hopelessness and apathy that the speaker has towards his future. John Steven Childs sums it up well in saying Prufrock’s “chronic indecision blocks him from some important action” (Childs). Each literary device- symbolism, character, and allusion- supports this description. Ultimately, the premise of the poem is Prufrock second guessing himself to no end over talking to a woman, but this issue represents all forms of insecurity and inactivity.
In "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," T. S. Eliot reveals the silent insecurity of a man, for whom the passing of time indicates the loss of virility and confidence. Throughout the poem, Prufrock struggles with his fear of inadequacy, which surfaces socially, physically and romantically. The desire to ask some "overwhelming question," of the one he wants is outweighed by his diffidence, reinforcing his belief in his shortcomings. Ultimately, this poem is the internal soliloquy of someone who attempts to know what he wants and how to get it, but whose social paralysis and lack of self-assuredness prevents either of these possibilities.
Many people in the world who are unhappy with their lives can connect with the emptiness the hollow men feel in Eliot’s poem. “We are the stuffed men leaning together headpiece filled with straw” indicates an unoriginal quality that all the men share. Their goals in life are alike because they are not fulfilling. In “The Hollow Men,” the image of scarecrows represent people’s empty lives and their vacant pursuits. The hollow men’s lives have no point or meaning.
In the early 1900’s, the artistic movement of modernism dominated many facets of aesthetic representation as writers, artists, and musicians abandoned the starched, conventional styles of the Victorian age for a less restrictive form of expression. Artisans, particularly the writers of the period, experimented within their craft by ignoring the traditional narrative and poetic forms in an attempt convey their personal disdain for the social climate of a newly industrialized culture consumed with monetary wealth and the ideals of genteel refinement that attended to its standards. This contempt for the conventional values of society became a prevailing theme of modern American literature, as writers like T.S. Eliot turned the focus of their works away from the portrayal and praise of upper and middle class society and toward their personal critique of this mode of life. Eliot's poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," embodies this popular modern theme by directing the reader's attention toward how an individual is subconsciously affected by the standards of society by focusing on the self and how social ethics can drive feelings of inadequacy and alienation.
T.S. Eliot's “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” embodies many of the different feelings of American's during the Modernist movement. Prufrock was seen as the prototype of the modern man, it is through his character in this poem that T.S. Eliot shows how man felt insecure, how the new theories of psychology were changing the concept of the mind and how society was becoming more doubtful and indecisive and less of an action taking people. The film Till Human Voices Wake Us, uses Eliot's poem as a base to showcase these ideas and to show how dreams and the past can help shape a man. .
T.S. Eliot has been one of the most daring innovators of twentieth-century poetry. His poem“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, is different and unusual. He rejects the logic connection, thus, his poems lack logic interpretation. He himself justifies himself by saying: he wrote it to want it to be difficult. The dissociation of sensibility, on the contrary, arouses the emotion of readers immediately. This poem contains Prufrock’ s love affairs. But it is more than that. It is actually only the narration of Prufrock, a middle-aged man, and a romantic aesthete , who is bored with his meaningless life and driven to despair because he wished but
T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is an ironic depiction of a man’s inability to take decisive action in a modern society that is void of meaningful human connection. The poem reinforces its central idea through the techniques of fragmentation, and through the use of Eliot’s commentary about Prufrock’s social world. Using a series of natural images, Eliot uses fragmentation to show Prufrock’s inability to act, as well as his fear of society. Eliot’s commentary about Prufrock’s social world is also evident throughout. At no point in the poem did Prufrock confess his love, even though it is called “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, but through this poem, T.S. Eliot voices his social commentary about the world that Prufrock lives in.
At a point in all mortal’s existence, there will be a moment when their soul is between two states of being, waiting to be judged. Without the fearlessness and faith to move on to the afterlife, they will spend eternity stuck in purgatory. When T. S. Eliot wrote “The Hollow Men,” he used symbolism, imagery, and repetition to share his insight to address the lack of courage and faith that plagues every human being.
Eliot's Themes of Death and Futility in the Poem Remind Your Self of The Hollow Men
T.S. Eliot is often considered one of the greatest and most influential poets of the 20th Century. Not only were his highly regarded poems such as “The Wasteland” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” influential to the literary style of his time, but his work as a publisher highlighted the work of many talented poets. Analyzing his poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” with psychoanalytic criticism reveals several core issues in the speaker of the poem, and may reflect Eliot himself.
One of T.S. Eliot’s earliest poems, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, is a prime example of a text that takes a turn inwards in terms of conveying the experience it presents. The poem provides a look into the distressed mind of an archetypal modern man of the times. It does this using the speaker’s stream of consciousness presented as a dramatic monologue. Prufrock, the poem’s speaker, seeks to advance his relationship with a woman who has caught his eye. He wonders if he has “the strength to force the moment to its crisis” (Eliot, 80). Prufrock is so entrenched in self-doubt that he is uncertain whether he is capable of having a relationship with this woman. His knowledge of the world he lives in and his circumstances keep him from attempting to approach this prospective lover. He contemplates the reasons for which he believes he cannot be with her and scolds himself for even thinking that it was possibl...
Should Jails and Prisons be abolished in the United States? Prisons are usually referred to as correctional facilities in the United States. Their main function is to correct people who have been termed as lawbreakers by a court of law. Imprisonment can be described as the limiting of a person’s liberty as a result of a crime committed or a law broken. Some of the prisons in the United States are for profit, which means that they aim to make money out of the prisoners.
T.S Eliot, widely considered to be one of the fathers of modern poetry, has written many great poems. Among the most well known of these are “The Waste Land, and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, which share similar messages, but are also quite different. In both poems, Eliot uses various poetic techniques to convey themes of repression, alienation, and a general breakdown in western society. Some of the best techniques to examine are ones such as theme, structure, imagery and language, which all figure prominently in his poetry. These techniques in particular are used by Eliot to both enhance and support the purpose of his poems.