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The love song of j. alfred prufrock questions
The love song of j. alfred prufrock questions
The love song of j. alfred prufrock questions
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The main character of T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a man named J. Alfred Prufrock, who is extremely insecure. Prufrock clearly has an inferiority complex, throughout the poem he shows his feeling of inadequacy. For example, Prufrock is very concerned with his own appearance. Due to his inadequacies he is unable to enter into a romantic relationship with a woman. Prufrock often feels judge and scrutinized by women making it impossible to pursue any sort of relations with women. He eventually admits, “in short, [he] was afraid” (86). Prufrock keeps trying to convince himself that he has plenty of time to seize his opportunity with women, despite the fact that he “grow[s] old” (line 120). He not only feels anxious
"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
In his poem Eliot paints the picture of an insecure man looking for his niche in society. Prufrock has fallen in with the times, and places a lot of weight on social status and class to determine his identity. He is ashamed of his personal appearance and looks towards social advancement as a way to assure himself and those around him of his worth and establish who he is. Throughout the poem the reader comes to realize that Prufrock has actually all but given up on himself and now sees his balding head and realizes that he has wasted his life striving for an unattainable goal.
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 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
In T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” the author is establishing the trouble the main character, Prufrock, is having coming to terms with middle age. He is deeply distressed over the fact that he is growing old, and feels that the prime of his life has passed him by. His preoccupation with time throughout the poem characterizes his fear of aging. He is a man experiencing a mid-life crisis, brought about by his perception of aging and his own feelings of inadequacy.
T.S. Eliot’s poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock has a plethora of possible interpretations. Many people argue that the poem represents a man who appears to be very introverted person who is contemplating a major decision in his life. This decision is whether or not he will consummate a relationship with someone he appears to have an attraction to or feelings for. People also debate whether or not Prufrock from the poem is typical of people today. While there are a plethora of reasons Prufrock is not typical of people today the main three reasons are he is very reserved, he overthinks most situations and he tries avoid his problems instead of solve them.
In conclusion, after exploring the theme of this poem and reading it for myself, Eliot has created this persona, in industrialised England or somewhere else. A man of low self-esteem, you embark his journey as he struggles with a rational fear of being rejected by a woman. Which gives the reader sympathy to Prufrock, as he lives within his own personal
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is hardly a love song at all. That irony is clear in that the narrator’s voice is anxious, self-conscious, and depressed. It seems he has wasted his life or that life was wasted on him, and he regrets not being born as a creature that lives on the bottom of the sea. The very last lines of the poem,
In "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", written by T. S. Elliot in 1917, J. Alfred Prufrock makes the reader privy to his innermost thoughts on an evening out. Prufrock wants to lead the reader to an overwhelming question, raising expectations, but he is a bitterly disappointing man; he never asks the question. He lacks self-esteem, women are intimidating to him, and he is too much of a coward to ever be successful with women. The title is "The Love Song,", not "A Love Song." So whenever Prufrock is around women, he behaves the same way. He always has and always will. Because of his inability to change he will die a lonely man.
The early poetry of T. S. Eliot, poems such as "The Wasteland" or "The Love Song
The title T. S. Eliot chose for his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is ironic. Mr. Prufrock does not love anyone, nor does he believe he is loved. He has disdain for the society of which he wishes he were a part, and he believes society views him no differently. The imagery of Mr. Prufrock's thoughts provide the audience a more detailed insight into his character than had Mr. Eliot simply listed Mr. Prufrock's virtues and flaws. Mr. Prufrock is seen as an exaggeration or extreme for the sake of literary commentary, but the world has many Prufrocks in many differing degrees, and T. S. Eliot has made them a little easier to understand.
Being a poet is not an easy skill set and involves a great deal of creativity for a writer to generate a meaningful poem. T.S. Eliot wrote numerous poems and also “achieved eminence as an essayist writing on literary theory and criticism, social, philosophical, and theological issues” (Eliot iii). In one of his poems, The Hippopotamus, T.S. Eliot critiques the Christian doctrine and its believers. Eliot mocks religion in this poem through the use of literary devices such as figurative language, imagery, and sound.
The absence of a complete identity and the inability be whole is what creates a line between The Love song of J Alfred Prufrock with Eliot’s other poems The Hollow Men and Portrait of a Lady. These poems work together using imagery and characters to highlight the darkness that was weighting down most people after the First World War was finished.