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.
The theme of Prufrock is the negative, individuality repressing effect that society has on its people. The Prufrock persona illustrates this, he is alienated by the inane social rituals that define his life, “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons” and make it insignificant and useless. The Waste Land’s theme is that the world, in particular western civilisation, is a culturally and spiritually barren place. Society is portrayed as a pile of “…stony rubbish…”, the ruins of a once great city now reduced to rubble where nothing can grow. Lives mean nothing, but the poem also offers hope through a return to basic religious values, ending with the repeated chant of “Shantih shantih shantih”, which means, “the peace which passeth understanding”. The poems both portray the same basic idea, but they have two main differences. Firstly, there is the way in which the themes are expressed. In Prufrock , Eliot uses a persona as an example of the debilitating effect of living with so many expectations, rules, standards and meaningless rituals has on a the individual. In many ways, this is a very effe...
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.... Figuring very prominently is Dante, with the epigraph in Prufrock an exact quote from Inferno, and more subtle references found in The Waste Land that are very suggestive of a Dantean descent into hell. Dante, and to a lesser extent Joseph Conrad, from whom Eliot derives a certain amount of horror, which subtly complements his themes, have had a profound impact on Eliot’s writing. He chooses to quote or allude to parts of other works that complement his own.
The techniques used by Eliot in creating both The Waste Land and Prufrock, are used in largely similar ways as far as furthering his purpose, yet differ slightly in style or small alterations when examined more closely. Some techniques, such as imagery, are more similar than others. Though he may use devices differently for each poem, it is only in such a way that makes them unique, and conveys his purpose.
"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.
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.
This powerful image of the fog that encircles the house immediately makes a sense of conflicting elements in Prufrock, the fog as an object Eliot treated it as in his thecery as the objective correlative, the fog is no doubt is a mode of the urban blight caused by coal. Yet such feelings is double effects of interpretations that comes to prufrock, the poem juxtaposes the outside settings with the inside, saloon, drawing rooms compared to the landscape which is full with smoke and fog that curbs and made prufrock go to sleep. Such juxtaposition maintains the conflict inside prufrock and stops him from taking any vital decision
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 early poetry of T. S. Eliot, poems such as "The Wasteland" or "The Love Song
First, Eliot weaves several layers of symbolism into Prufrocks’s narrative. This ambiguity shows largely through the vehicle of the yellow fog, which Eliot personifies with cat-like characteristics using phrases such as, “…rubs its back…rubs its muzzle on the window-panes” and “…curled once about the house, and fell asleep” in reference to the mist (Eliot). This feline depiction of the city smog creates an eerie setting which serves to further the tone of unsteadiness in Prufrock’s ramblings. The seeping movements of the fog also mirror the uncontrolled movements of Prufrock’s thoughts and his polluted self-concept which causes him to question his every move to no end (Childs). The smog is uncontainable and indefinable, much like Prufrock’s emotions when dependent upon his non-existent actions (Childs). In another instance, Eliot breaks up the deep, incessant wanderings of the speaker’s mind with the phrase, “In the room the women come and go talking of Michaelangelo” (Eliot). These women symbolize the society in which Pr...
Both Browning and Eliot seek to improve upon the nature of the dramatic monologue. Browning emphasizes structure and a separation between the poet and the character which is reiterated by Eliot’s poem. Browning’s influence on Eliot can be seen by the form and structure of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” adding working intrinsically with the theme and subject of the work. However, Eliot deviates slightly from Browning by the portrayal of his characters, and the amount of information that he is willing to share with the reader. The intended message of Browning’s poem is much more apparent than Eliot’s who creates an open ended poem that can be interpreted differently by each reader.
The Modernist era of poetry, like all reactionary movements, was directed, influenced, and determined by the events preceding it. The gradual shift away from the romanticized writing of the Victorian Era served as a litmus test for the values, and the shape of poetry to come. Adopting this same idea, William Carlos Williams concentrated his poetry in redirecting the course of Modernist writing, continuing a break from the past in more ways than he saw being done, particularly by T.S. Eliot, an American born poet living abroad. Eliot’s monumental poem, The Waste Land, was a historically rooted, worldly conscious work that was brought on by the effects of World War One. The implementation of literary allusions versus imagination was one point that Williams attacked Eliot over, but was Williams completely in stride with his own guidelines? Looking closely at Williams’s reactionary poem to The Waste Land, Spring and All, we can question whether or not he followed the expectations he anticipated of Modernist work; the attempts to construct new art in the midst of a world undergoing sweeping changes.
Message of Hope in Eliot's The Waste Land, Gerontion, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
As a conclusion, since he is a 20th Century Modernist poet, Eliot believes that readers should have knowledge about ‘’ dead poets and artists’’ so they could appreciate the value of an artist’s work truly and better.He is right in what he says and also he believes one can only be original if he/she combines past and present.His poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock obviously carries these characteristics of Moderist Poetry.
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
...yric in expression" (Longman, p. 1958) while Eliot's poem is "chaotic, irregular and fragmentary" (Longman. p. 2416). Both poems deal with loneliness, isolation and internal alienation, yet Browning's Bishop seems to be isolated from without, from the world, and Eliot's Prufrock is isolated from within, creating his own alienation from the world. These concepts, while not new, were carried over time, expressed in both the Victorian era and in the new Modernism, yet this theme, from these two poems, takes on a completely different viewpoint relative to the differing ideologies of the era's in which they represent.
T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is an elaborate and mysterious montage of lines from other works, fleeting observations, conversations, scenery, and even languages. Though this approach seems to render the poem needlessly oblique, this style allows the poem to achieve multi-layered significance impossible in a more straightforward poetic style. Eliot’s use of fragmentation in The Waste Land operates on three levels: first, to parallel the broken society and relationships the poem portrays; second, to deconstruct the reader’s familiar context, creating an individualized sense of disconnection; and third, to challenge the reader to seek meaning in mere fragments, in this enigmatic poem as well as in a fractious world.
T. S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" reveals the unvoiced inner thoughts of a disillusioned, lonely, insecure, and self-loathing middle-aged man. The thoughts are presented in a free association, or stream of consciousness style, creating images from which the reader can gain insight into Mr. Prufrock's character. Mr. Prufrock is disillusioned and disassociated with society, yet he is filled with longing for love, comfort, and companionship. He is self-conscious and fearful of his image as viewed through the world's eye, a perspective from which he develops his own feelings of insignificance and disgust. T. S. Eliot uses very specific imagery to build a portrait of Mr. Prufrock, believing that mental images provide insight where words fail.