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T s eliot the love song of j alfred prufrock poem analysis
T s eliot the love song of j alfred prufrock poem analysis
T s eliot the love song of j alfred prufrock poem analysis
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T.S. Eliot’s use of the term “Love Song” in the title of his poem is quickly observed to be ironic due to the reoccurring idea of isolation. From the start of the poem, through an epigraph from Dante’s Inferno, we get a sense that the speaker in the poem is stuck in a terrible place, as Guido da Montefeltro is stuck in hell in Inferno. It is a place that “no one has ever / returned alive from” (?) which convinces Montefeltro to reveal his secrets as he is sure anyone else in hell is stuck there without the possibility of going back into the world with other people. The use of this passage by Eliot aids in setting up the fact that Prufrock is isolated from those around him and is unable to leave his mental confinement in order to escape his …show more content…
All three descriptions give a vivid image of emptiness and isolation- “half-deserted” simply by its wording, “one-night cheap hotels” through the implication of a one-night stand and “sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells” by the imagery of a dirty, hence unopened and empty, restaurant. No matter where Prufrock may go the feeling of being alone is present and he cannot escape it. The isolation of the setting is also expressed through the use of enjambment. The three previously mentioned references to empty places are each found at the end of their respective lines due to strategically placed cuts by T.S. Eliot. These cuts in the lines allow for the descriptions of these places to be undisturbed by words following them, thus allowing the reader to fully grasp the extent at which these environments display Prufrock’s …show more content…
The speaker reference to a room where “women come and go / talking of Michelangelo” (13-14), which makes a very clear allusion to the artist Michelangelo. The women are talking about him to seem knowledgeable due to the fact that he was a renowned Renaissance artist, leaving little attention to anything or anyone else around them. This would include Prufrock, who made the allusion to Michelangelo to display that the women’s attention was drawn to speaking of the artist whereas his attention was focused on other things, which caused him to be an outcast in the conversations. This idea is reinforced in the third stanza where the yellow smog and fog are used as a metaphor for a cat. The wording used indicates that “the yellow fog rubs its back” (15) and “the yellow smog rubs its muzzle” (16) against window-panes. The metaphoric cat is outside of the room previously mentioned in the poem where “the women come and go” (13) and watches them through the windows, unable to find a way into the room. The cat is the representation of how Prufrock feels that he does not belong in the room with the women, such that it remains alone outside and eventually simply falls asleep while still outdoors, as though it accepts its predicament of
"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.
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
By a correct reading of "Prufrock," I mean a reading consistent with the central theme of the poet's belief made mute because the poet lives in a culture of unbelief--that is, the "silence" of the poetic vision in modernity. Prufrock renounces his inherited, romantic role as "poet as prophet" and renounces poetry's role as a successor to religion. The future of poetry may have once been immense, but that future no longer exists for Prufrock, who is faced not only with the certainty of the rejection of his poetic vision but also with a situation in which there are no grounds for rhetoric: "That is not what I meant at all. / That is not it, at all." Fear of rejection leads Prufrock to the ultimate silencing of the prophet and hero within himself, to being "a pair of ragged claws." He cannot share his poetic vision of life: to do so would threaten the very existence of that life. Paradoxically, not to share his light, his "words among mankind," threatens the loss ...
The first stanza introduces Prufrock’s isolation, as epitomized metaphorically by “half-deserted streets” (4): while empty streets imply solitude, Eliot’s diction emphasize Prufrock having been abandoned by the other “half” needed for a relationship or an “argument” (8). Hoping for a companion, Prufrock speaks to the reader when saying, “Let us go then, you and I” (1), as he needs to address his lament to an audience; conscious of the reader’s curiosity regarding the “overwhelming question,” (10) Prufrock answers, “Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’” (11). (The likely explanation for Eliot’s inconsistent use of you in this stanza is Prufrock probably meaning you as “To lead one,” as he refers to himself and not the reader in line 10.) Eliot continues the metaphor of Prufrock’s lonesomeness by anthropomorphizing the “yellow fog” and “smoke” (15, 16) to signify Prufrock, who interacts not with people, but only the environment in the third, fourth, and fifth stanzas. Clearly it is Prufrock who “rubs [his] muzzle on the window-panes” (15, 16), passively lets “fall upon [his] back the soot that falls from chimneys” (19), “slides along the street” (24), and performs the actions also described; also, the opacity of “fog” and “smoke” symbolizes the difficulty with which readers perceive Prufrock’s true character, further separating ...
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.
The poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” written by T.S. Eliot is a depiction of sadness and a disillusioned narrator. While reading this poem, one senses that the narrator is disturbed and has maybe given up hope, and that he feels he is just an actor in a tedious drama At the very beginning of the poem, Eliot uses a quote from Dante’s “Inferno”, preparing the poem’s reader to expect a vision of hell. This device seems to ask the reader to accept that what they are about to be told by the poem’s narrator was not supposed to be revealed to the living world, as Dante was exposed to horrors in the Inferno that were not supposed to be revealed to the world of the living. This comparison is frightening and intriguing, and casts a shadow on the poem and its narrator before it has even begun. J. Alfred Prufrock is anxious, self-concsious, and depressed.
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
Handler 356-7. " The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is one of the most influential poems of the twentieth century (Williams 49). It is certainly not a love song like any that has been written before. The second and third lines shock the reader because of their unusual imagery that would be out of place in a traditional love poem, describing the setting sunlit sky as looking "like a patient etherised upon a table" (Eliot 3). This "etherised" outside world is the key to understanding all of Prufrock's views.
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...
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
Prufrock’s social world is initially revealed as he takes the reader on a journey. Through the lines 1-36, the reader travels with Prufrock through the modern city and its streets as we experience Prufrock’s life and explore his surroundings through his eyes. From the very beginning, the city is portrayed as bleak and empty with no signs of happiness. The setting as Prufrock walks through the street appears to be polluted, dirty, and run-down, as if it is the cheap side of town, giving the feeling of it being lifeless, still, eerie, sleepy and unconscious. Eliot uses imagery, from the skyline to half-deserted streets, to cheap hotels to sawdust restaurants to demonstrate the loneliness and alienation the city possesses. The city Prufrock resides in is, in a way, a shadow of how he is as a person, and the images of the city speak to some part of his personality. Just as the skyline is described as “a patient etherised upon a table” (3), it foreshadows and hints that Prufrock has an...
The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot, is the story of the life of a man. It tells of a man reminiscing over his life, regretting decisions that he made. Of a man who is thinking back on his life, and toward the end, it is told how the man is closely approaching death. He wants to be able to escape it, but alas, cannot, and, in the end, he dies. In The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot expresses a sense of regret using literary devices, such as imagery, metaphors, and allusion.
...ing line the eloquently depicts the act of daydreaming and having a quiet fantasy abruptly disturbed by reality (131-133). It is only in his ruminations that Prufrock can escape the demands of society and the expectation of rejection.
The poem begins by suggesting that Mr. Prufrock is mentally disassociated with society. Mr. Prufrock, addressing the audience or some imaginary confidante, proposes the mental journey commence "When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised [sic] upon a table" (ll. 2-3). The lines evoke images of drug induced, altered realities. He follows by recommending visits to "one-night cheap hotels" (l. 6) and "sawdust restaurants" (l. 7). The references infer that the locations are not the speaker's normal environments and are part of fantasy environments. In lines 15 through 22, the speaker credits the smog with feline characteristics. He further states "Though I have seen my head [...] brought in upon a platter..." (l. 81). Although it is a biblical reference to the decapitation of John the Baptist, the statement is indicative of an active fantasy life. He admits to having heard mermaids sing and speaks of life on a beach. He creates the fanta...