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S. eliot’s “the love song of j. alfred prufrock”
Symbolism in the lovesong of j alfred prufrock by ts eliot
S. eliot’s “the love song of j. alfred prufrock”
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I.T.S Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” is about the balding, middle- aged Prufrock who forces himself to attend a party in order to find a woman to love. Although there are many women at the party who engage Prufrock’s attention with their “perfume” and their “arms that are braceleted and white and bare,” Prufrock can never bring himself to approach any of them. Unfortunately, he ends up leaving the party empty handed (lines 63, 65). Prufrock has several problems that stop him from success in the pursuit of love: low self-esteem, poor social skills, and fear of rejection.
BP 1 = low self-esteem. Since Prufrock doesn’t believe in himself it doest matter if a female gives Prufrock the opportunity or not because
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There are numerous ways to fix this problem when your self-esteem is so low. For example the teachers doctors two that can help. But age is not the problem because women like older men …show more content…
These personal problems are very severe problems that take a lot of time and effort to correct but this can be done. Unfortunately, Prufrock does not want to invest either the time or the effort to make this possible. Prufrock will never put on his morning coat or venture out again. His future may be like that of those “lonely men in shirt sleeves leaning out of windows” that Prufrock passed earlier on the way to the party. Those men have given up on life and hope, and it appears that perhaps Prufrock has given up on these things, as well. Eliot, T. S. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The Conscious reader. E.d. Caroline Shrodes 7th ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon,
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is about a timid and downcast man in search of meaning, of love, and in search of something to break from the dullness and superficiality which he feels his life to be. Eliot lets us into Prufrock's world for an evening, and traces his progression of emotion from timidity, and, ultimately, to despair of life. He searches for meaning and acceptance by the love of a woman, but falls miserably because of his lack of self-assurance. Prufrock is a man for whom, it seems, everything goes wrong, and for whom there are no happy allowances. The emptiness and shallowness of Prufrock's "universe" and of Prufrock himself are evident from the very beginning of the poem. He cannot find it in himself to tell the woman what he really feels, and when he tries to tell her, it comes out in a mess. At the end of the poem, he realizes that he has no big role in life.
Eliot, T.S.. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." An Introduction to Poetry. 13th ed. Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1966. 369-372. Print.
The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a poem that was written by T. S Eliot. The poem introduces the character, Prufrock, as a man who is very pessimistic about everything and is incapable of change. Prufrock sees the society he lives in as a place that is full of people who think alike, and he thinks he is different from them. Though Prufrock, realizes that the society he is associated with needs a change and have more people who think differently, but the fact that he is very concerned about what people would think of him if he tries to speak up to make a change or that he would be ignored or be misunderstood for whatever he says hindered him from expressing himself the way he would like to. Prufrock then decides not to express himself in order to avoid any type of rejection. In the poem, Prufrock made use of several imagery and metaphor to illustrate how he feels about himself and the society he is involved in. Prufrock use of imageries and
Prufrock's dissatisfaction with his personal appearance is evidence of an underlying lack of self-confidence. Not only is he unhappy with the way he looks, having "To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;" but he is constantly afraid of what others will have to say about him: "(They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!')"(41) and "(... 'But ho...
Alfred Prufrock always had a low self-esteem, and no confidence to take a chance with these girls. The reason why Prufrock was intimidated to go talk with these women is that he was scared to be turned down. He did not want to ask her on a date, and then the women reject him. “And should I then presume?/And how should I begin?” (Eliot 68-69). This quote is demonstrating how Prufrock is debating on whether and how he should approach a girl. He does not know how to start a conversation with a girl. He goes through these questions every day, and the result is the same every day. He is nervous and self conscious that the women will notice the bald spot on the back of his head and his thin physique. He is trying to find love, but his lack of confidence is holding him back. “And I have known the eyes already, known them all” (Eliot 55). Eliot is explaining how Prufrock knows all of the women who go through the coffee shop each day. He recognizes their eyes because because he sees them so often. As bad as he wants to go and talk with these women, he still will not do it in fear of being rejected. His scarce of being turned down makes his life lonely in a coffee shop for the rest of his life. J. Alfred Prufrock wants to be a hero and tries to compare himself to John the Baptist, Lazarus, and Hamlet. But his low self-esteem and self-consciousness caused him to think low of himself “Prufrock realizes that the best he can do in Shakespeare’s play is to be Polonius, who talks too much, annoys everyone, and is finally killed by accident when he is eavesdropping on Hamlet and his mother.” (Frazer, Timothy
a man named Prufrock. Prufrock, at first glance, has a cool composure. He leads his
T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. Vol. 2. ed. M. H. Abrams New York, London: Norton, 1993.
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.
T.S. Eliot’s breakthrough poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is expertly crafted to have a complex structure with various hidden themes. The poem acts as an inner monologue for the titular character, appearing as lyric-narrative poetry. However, it does appear to lean towards a lyric poem, with the hazy plot consisting of Prufrock describing what his life has been like, in retrospect to speculating on what is to come next. The monologue throughout is melancholy in nature, with Prufrock dwelling on issues such as unrequited love, his frail body, his looming demise, and a dissatisfaction with the modernist world. Eliot uses a variety of metaphor within the poem to showcase Prufrock’s indecision, between being unable to fully live, while
Prufrocks next thoughts tell of his old age and his lack of will to say what is on his mind. He mentions his bald spot in his hair and his thin arms and legs. This suggests that he knows he is growing old, and therefore contradicts what he had mentioned earlier in the poem about having plenty of time. Throughout the poem he is indecisive and somewhat aloof from the self-involved group of women. One part of him would like to startle them out of their frustratingly polite conversations and express his love for her, but to accomplish this he would have to risk disturbing their ?universe? and being rejected. He also mentions ?sprawling on a pin?, as though he pictures himself being pinned in place and viciously analyzed like that of an insect being literally pinned in place. The latter part of the poem captures his sense of overwhelming lack of willpower for failing to act daringly, not only at that tea party, but throughout his life.
For Eliot, poetic representation of a powerful female presence created difficulty in embodying the male. In order to do so, Eliot avoids envisioning the female, indeed, avoids attaching gender to bodies. We can see this process clearly in "The Love Song of J. Prufrock." The poem circles around not only an unarticulated question, as all readers agree, but also an unenvisioned center, the "one" whom Prufrock addresses. The poem never visualizes the woman with whom Prufrock imagines an encounter except in fragments and in plurals -- eyes, arms, skirts - synecdoches we might well imagine as fetishistic replacements. But even these synecdochic replacements are not clearly engendered. The braceleted arms and the skirts are specifically feminine, but the faces, the hands, the voices, the eyes are not. As if to displace the central human object it does not visualize, the poem projects images of the body onto the landscape (the sky, the streets, the fog), but these images, for all their marked intimation of sexuality, also avoid the designation of gender (the muttering retreats of restless nights, the fog that rubs, licks, and lingers). The most visually precise images in the poem are those of Prufrock himself, a Prufrock carefully composed – "My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, / My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin" -- only to be decomposed by the watching eyes of another into thin arms and legs, a balding head brought in upon a platter. Moreover, the images associated with Prufrock are themselves, as Pinkney observes, terrifyingly unstable, attributes constituting the identity of the subject at one moment only to be wielded by the objective the next, like the pin that centers his necktie and then pinions him to the wall or the arms that metamorphose into Prufrock's claws. The poem, in these
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.
Those sides of Prufrock's character are shown only to the reader. The ladies have to judge him on his appearance and his behavior during the evening out. He is an older man, his hair is growing thin, and he is skinny. Eve...
...r than to be some lower form of life (l. 73-74). Even in Mr. Prufrock's fantasy world at the beach, he acknowledges that he doesn't expect even the mermaids to sing to him (l. 125). He is unworthy in both worlds.
In this passage, it's clear that Prufrock desires a woman's attention but doesn't think he will ever have it. This pessimistic outlook gives no hope at all and is just depressing.