The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot and Annabel Lee by Edgar Allen Poe are two poems that, even though they were written 100 years apart, by very different people, are eerily similar. Many of the same themes are prevalent throughout both poems, mainly the themes of love and death. The poems also utilize many of the same poetical devices. Eliot was known for his surreal landscapes and Poe for his macabre style, but in these poems, both of them focus on the same ideas. The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock is told by Mr. Prufrock himself, as the narrator. This poem explores the dark side of love, and how most of the time, love ends in death. Eliot also explores darkness in nature. The darker side of love is first seen …show more content…
He talks about “there will be time to prepare a face for the faces that you meet,” indicating that most people refuse to be themselves with others, instead relying on masks to make people love them. As for death, the narrator is afraid of it and knows that he must love before he dies. “I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, and I have seen the Eternal Footman hold my coat and snicker, and in short I was afraid. And was it worth it, after all?” Here, the narrator talks about how he has seen death, and wonders if love was worth all the troubles he has gone through. Likewise, Poe explores the themes of love and death in Anabel Lee by telling the story of a woman, whom he loved, that was killed by a disease. He begins the poem as a fairy tale by saying “many and many a year ago,” which is the equivalent of “once upon a time.” He explains how he fell in love with this woman as a child and loves her even now. In this poem, Poe speaks of an unimaginably deep love, to the point that the narrator sees this woman every time the sun rises and every time the stars come out. He even goes and lays down next to her in her sepulcher at night, because he cannot bear to be away from her. The narrator explains that their love was so deep and pure, …show more content…
The most notable is his repetition of the line “In the rooms the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo,” which is used to enhance the surreal feeling of this poem. Also, his repetition of the words “there will be time” when coupled with the rest of the poem, is a subtle push towards the lesson the author wants us to understand: Don’t put off for tomorrow, what you can get done today. In the second stanza, Eliot uses a metaphor to compare the fog to a cat: “The yellow fog that rubbed its back upon the windowpanes, licked its tongue into the corners of the evening.” Poe also utilizes poetical devices to add to the tone of the poem, and to impact the overall effect of the poem. The main device he uses is repetition and he wields it excellently. The poem is intentionally divided into stanzas with 3 long lines and three short ones. The short lines are always a repetition of the “long e” sound, which adds to the poems mystery, and it’s morose message. Another poetical device Poe uses is rhythm. The rhythm in Annabel Lee is designed like a ghost story; it starts off slow and steady, almost calming, and as the poem progresses, it picks up speed and intensity until the final chilling lines are almost screaming at you. Poe was a master of this sort of style, and it shines through in this
Edgar Allan Poe's life can be summed up in just a few words: death, love, loss, sorrow, and mystery. What better way to express this than through a poem? Poe did exactly this in "Annabel Lee," made famous by its smooth flow and rhyme. The poem details a relationship between two young lovers. Annabel Lee, is killed by the envious high angels of heaven in order to destroy the love between herself and the narrator. However, this setback was evidently minor because their love still existed, and even thoug...
When creating his famous poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", T.S. Eliot was inspired by a character depicted in the novella known as Daisy Miller, written by Henry James. This character, Winterbourne, was intertwined and considered when creating the timid character of Prufrock. It is evident that both men share similar personalities and characteristics that link them together, both being prime examples of emptiness and despair told through theses writings.
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.
A mutual understanding towards many of Poe’s works is that the loss of a lover brings about insanity, but the truth is that in Poe’s works the loss of a young lover leads to depression. This is a theme that is played out in more than one of Poe’s works, but it is most prevalent in the depressing poem Annabel Lee. The speaker is conflicted with losing what is his whole world and his childhood lover. While all is well with both him and the girl alive, an insurmountable depression takes hold once the winds blow out to carry her to the grave. This is a theme that plays out often in his works and has been observed as one of his main inspirations. Within Peter Coviello’s research, he comes to the conclusion that “Within [Poe’s] world, only very young girls, who are not yet encumbered by the revulsions of adult femininity, seem capable of providing a site for stable heterosexual male desire in Poe.” Rather than using a full fledged adult as his lover, he engineered a child into his poem so the lover does not harness the potential to mutate into a monstros...
The poem opened up with a fairy tale line and right off the bat you had the idea that it was going to be about the narrator sharing his love. Not to mention, it was a poem of rhyming to help make the reader feel a type of way. This poem was written after the death of his beloved wife, Virginia Clemm (the woman who married him at the age of thirteen) so it is most likely based off of her and the love that he had for her. Love is the main theme in the poem and the love that Annabel Lee and the narrator shared starting in their childhood. In the poem, Poe demonstrates that even after Annabel’s death that their love was too strong to be destroyed by the angels or demons. Just about everything that he sees reminds him of Annabel, the stars, moon and he lies by her tomb at night by the sea. Loving her wasn’t complicated at all for him, even when he was known to struggle with relationships throughout his whole life. Even though she is dead, he makes us believe that he can still see her bright eyes and that they will soon meet again in the future. The one line that caught my eye the most about their love is this, “But our love it was stronger by far than the love of those who were older than we—“ (Poe). Their love was said to be so strong that even the older and wiser people couldn’t understand the strength of their love. The main purpose of this poem was to show all of the outsiders that there was nothing that could ever come in-between their love, no matter if she was dead or alive. Their souls will forever be united until the day that they will meet
“Annabel Lee” is based on a couple in a kingdom by the sea and the girl, who’s name is Annabel Lee, dies ("Shmoop.com"). So Annabel’s partner is reminiscing about the memories he once shared Annabel. However, the partners’ tone of voice slowly changes throughout the poem from a caring and happy voice to a sad longing voice as if to say Annabel’s name would somehow bring her back ("Shmoop.com"). Throughout the poem, it is evident that the theme of the poem is that the speaker was in love with Annabel Lee. Furthermore, in line 9 it says, “But we loved with a love that was more than love” (Poe) which is basically stating the couple loved each other so much that they felt something that was more than love. The speaker uses symbols to help the reader visualize his point. Symbols such as a chilling wind, a highborn kinsman, and winged seraphs that apparently “took” Annabel Lee from him ("Shmoop.com"). The poem of “Annabel Lee” may be a tragic love story, but in the end it is a very interesting piece of literature written by Edgar Allan
Eliot, T. S. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in An Introduction to Literature. Ed Sylvan Barnet et al. 13 ed. New York: Longman. 2004. 937-940.
...ut of the cloud by night”. That wind was also associated with the words “chilling and killing”. Virginia died of Tuberculosis, so the similarities between her and Annabel Lee are uncanny. The death of Virginia affected Poe so much he wrote a poem dedicated to her. It is also known that his drinking problem got worse after her death.
Poe was born into a family of professional actors. He experienced death at an early age when his parent died before he was three years old. John and Frances Allan raised Poe as a foster child in Richmond. John Allan gave Poe excellent schooling opportunities. Though he never finished college, Poe became very successful by using his life experiences to write dark, twisted literature that appealed to adults ("Edgar Allan Poe"). The last of Poe’s poems to be published was “Annabel Lee.” It is thought to be inspired by his late wife Virginia (Johnson). In this poem the speaker mourns the death of his young bride, Annabel Lee. His loss encourages him to proclaim that jealous angels caused Annabel Lee’s death to separate the young couple. The speaker reveals that he has not been able to accept their separation and has been spending night after night at her tomb (Johnson). The use of figurative language further establishes the theme of jealousy. Poe uses personification of the wind to explain the death of Annabel Lee ("Overview: 'Annabel Lee'."). The “chilling” wind is what takes Annabel Lee away from the speaker (Poe Line 26). The article "Overview: 'Annabel Lee'" states, “A chilling wind emerges from the sky, and so her death is tied to heaven and the jealousy of the angels” ("Overview: 'Annabel Lee'"). Poe uses imagery to refer to the jealousy the angels have for the speaker and Annabel Lee’s love. Poe states, “The angels, not half so happy in Heaven, /Went envying her and me” (Poe Lines 21-22). This imagery that the angels are not happy in Heaven further emphasizes the extent of their jealousy. The double naming of Annabel Lee’s burial chamber is a metaphor to allow the theme of death to overshadow the theme of love. This is able to show that their love can conquer the grave and overcome the jealousy from the angels("Overview: 'Annabel
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
The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, a poem created by the late T.S. Eliot was a poet in the 20th Century (when Europe was at its peak of industrialisation) and this is considered to be one of his highly regarded pieces alongside The Wasteland. This poem is a monologue of the persona of J. Alfred Prufrock, (the speaker of the poem) a middle aged man, intellectual and described with little self-confidence with himself who has problems in dealing with self-image and anxiety. He’s a solitary man who is achingly shy and has little courage, when isolated, he isn’t subjected to a social lifestyle and this halts him when it comes to speaking with a female. The title to me is ironic, Eliot titled it a ‘Lovesong’, therefore, the language used in the poem cements a theme of pessimism, as hardly anything is written on love.
As the reading above indicates, Poe grieved continuously throughout his life for his sainted “Lenore”. He wrote numerous poems before and after the death of Virginia Clemm to her. “Annabel Lee” was actually written before the death of Virginia as a token of his undying love for her.
The poem “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allen Poe is a beautiful story that outlines events that happened between the speaker and his love. The story paints a mental picture of a love that is so strong that angels become jealous and take Annabel Lee away from the speaker, but even though she is gone, his love for her never ended. The story is full of imagery that leads to the central message of the story, which is love.
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.
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.