Outcasts In Society

Our last current election marked a division in our nation in which people of certain races, financial status, gender, and ethnicity were looked down upon by other members of society. Judgment filled our nation after citizens began to turn against other citizens, causing a deep barrier to be formed. This barrier formed because people tend to be afraid of others that are depicted as being different from themselves either socially, culturally, or physically due to the general fear of the unknown. As society depicts a group of individuals as different, a deep barrier is formed creating a group that is socially accepted by society and a group that is viewed as outcasts of society. The characters in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot and “The Garden Party” by Katherine Mansfield display indecisiveness and overall ambiguity throughout the short stories that depict social inequalities leading to the creation of outcasts in society through the creation of social barriers.

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” includes indecisiveness of an individual who is experiencing severe social anxiety in the thought of meeting a group of women who are conversing in the living room area. The individual is residing in a room upstairs while the women are conversing among themselves down stairs. This

Alfred Prufrock”, which acts as a barrier between the man and the women, and the doorway, which separates Laura and the women of the lower class in “The Garden Party”. The stairway and the doorway both symbolize a journey to break the barriers between individuals within a society. However, in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, the journey was only thought and dreamed of but not taken while Laura hesitantly takes the journey and steps through the doorway in “The Garden Party” ultimately breaking the