The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock
Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is an ironic depiction of a man’s inability to take decisive action in a modern society that is void of meaningful human connection. The poem reinforces its central idea through the techniques of fragmentation, and through the use of Eliot’s commentary about Prufrock’s social world. Using a series of natural images, Eliot uses fragmentation to show Prufrock’s inability to act, as well as his fear of society. Eliot’s commentary about Prufrock’s social world is also evident throughout. At no point in the poem did Prufrock confess his love, even though it is called “The Love Song of J.
- The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock Analysis
- The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock Annotated
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Alfred Prufrock”, but through this poem, T.S. Eliot voices his social commentary about the world that. The city is fragmented in itself, with a population that is lost and alone, a scattered collection of 'Streets that follow like a tedious argument' (8) above which 'lonely men in shirt-sleeves' (72) lean out of their isolated windows. Eliot achieves fragmentation through the use of imagery, in both specific as well as symbolic.Images and allusions aren’t Prufrock’s only fragmented features though; Eliot also uses the rhythm, and the rhyme is irregular throughout this poem.
Let us go then, you and I, T.S. Eliot, the 1948 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is one of the giants of modern literature, highly distinguished as a poet, literary critic, dramatist, and editor and publisher.
Throughout the poem, the rhyming schemes differ and constantly changed and evolved. There are instances when it is an unrhymed free verse, and instances where it would go for a longer period of time, then to shorter periods. The rhyme scheme creates a chaotic feeling, as well as feelings of disorganization and confusion, just as the world Prufrock resides in, and it does a good job portraying the anxiety that is rooted in the social world. He is afraid to confront those talking pointlessly about Michelangelo as well as he is intimidated by the thought of engaging in a gathering, believing that “there will be time” (23), and that he has 'time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions', indicating that his life and his social life is a bore, with repetitive routines that remains the same.
Prufrock’s constant worrying is also shown in not merely the. 986 Words 4 PagesIn The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.
Eliot and Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold the poets utilizes poetic devices to convey their respective themes. Through use of symbols and metaphors, the speaker in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock displays his fears of the changes brought with the younger generation, and isolation from the changing society. The speaker in Dover Beach, utilizes symbols, metaphors, and similes to state that the younger generation has less faith than the older, and society.
915 Words 4 PagesThe Love Song of Alfred Prufrock: Taking the Love out of SongA tragedy in a poem is usually characterized as an event that has a tragic or unhappy ending. They generally are used to teach morals or lessons.T.S. Eliot’s, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, is considered a tragedy because of the way Eliot uses four different writing styles: word choice, figurative language, images, and biblical allusions. Using these styles, Eliot acknowledges the tragic endeavor of single, reclusive. 1729 Words 7 Pages'The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock'The dramatic monologue “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock was written by Thomas Stearns Eliot and published in June of 1915. Eliot was born in St Louis, Missouri on September 26, 1888, where he grew up and lived until the age of eighteen. After high school, Eliot studied at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA and the Sorbonne in Paris, France. Eventually, Eliot ended up in England where he married his wife Vivien and spent the remainder of his life. 1647 Words 7 Pagesseen in T.S. Eliot’s work The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock. The main character, Prufrock, plans to ask the woman he loves the overwhelming question of marriage, but due to his pessimistic outlook, he became hesitant and self conscious. Surges of insecurity arise, and instead of proposing his love, Prufrock delays the question and spends the night talking nonsense to avoid the situation. In the end, Prufrock’s insecurities and fear of rejection alter his feelings of love into a sense of emotional protection. 970 Words 4 PagesNever in LoveWhen reading the title of T.S Eliot’s “The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock” it is believed we are in store for a poem of romance and hope. Keerthi suresh parents. A song that will inspire embrace and warmth of the heart, regretfully this is could not be further from the truth. This poem takes us into the depths of J.
Alfred Prufrock, someone who holds faltering doubt and as a result may never come to understand real love. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” takes us through Prufrock’s mindset and his self-doubting. 1928 Words 8 PagesHuman Voices Wake Us and We Drown’: Community in ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’,” James Haba contends that the repeated use of “you”, “we”, and “us” in T. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock” creates a personal ambience around the reader and Prufrock. Because of this, Haba argues that Eliot’s use of personal pronouns and references produces a sense of community and intimacy between the reader and Prufrock (53), even though Prufrock seemingly struggles with emotions of intimacy. 1966 Words 8 Pagessymbolism to capture the reader's attention in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
The poem has a dramatic discourse. The percipience of life's emptiness is the main theme of the poem. Eliot exhorts the spiritual decomposition by exploring a type of life in death. Eliot, who in the Clark Lectures notes, 'Real Irony is an expression of suffering'(Lobb, 53), uses irony and symbolism throughout the poem to exemplify the suffering of J.
Alfred Prufrock who believes he is filled with spiritual morbidity. 1125 Words 5 Pagesmodernism. 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,' despite being one of T.S Eliot 's earliest publications, still manages to remain one of the most famous. He uses this poem to not only draw out the psychological aspect of members of modern society, but also to draw out the aspect of the time that he lived in. The speaker of this poem is a modern man who feels alone, isolated, and incapable of making decisive actions for himself.
The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock Analysis
Prufrock desires to speak to a woman about his love for her, but he. 1005 Words 5 Pages“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” published in 1915, was written by a man named T.S. The speaker of the poem begins to describe an evening that appears to be somewhat romantic and a little mysterious. As the reader progresses into the poem, the mood soon fades and the reader starts to figure out that this evening is not what they pictured.
“Acquainted with the Night” is a poem written by Robert Frost. The poem was first published in 1927. The speaker of the poem has a similar mood as.
990 Words 4 Pages“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Elliot is in part a satire. It was written in the form of a dramatic monologue delivered by the poem’s speaker, J.
Alfred Prufrock. It begins with him asking an unknown “you” to accompany him on a walk. The two walk through town and stumbles upon women talking about Michelangelo at a social event.
The women’s bare arms and long dresses show off their knowledge of art. Prufrock wishes to talk to the women and is attracted to them sexually but he is afraid.
The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock Annotated
By barraging readers with a seemingly disjointed collage of images, T.S. Eliot uses the distinctly modernist style of Imagism to construct his poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Imagism, a literary movement closely linked to modernism, is based on the principles that poetry should be constructed of precise descriptions of concrete images. The language used by Imagists is clear and exact. They held that only words that are absolutely necessary to enhancing the description should be used in poetry.
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Ezra Pound, one of the most influential Imagist poets, defined this movement by saying: “ We are not a school of painters, but we believe that poetry should render particulars exactly and not deal in vague generalities, however magnificent and sonorous.” Knowing Eliot’s involvement with this movement, his use of imagery and description becomes especially important to the reader. His use of precise language invites readers to examine each word and image closely. In order to understand the meaning behind this poem, the reader must dissect Eliot’s imagery, analyze its symbolic meaning, and find thematic patterns. This site intends to do just that. By highlighting a few dominant images and allusions in the poem, I hope to gain some insight into Eliot’s use of imagery to relate the main themes of this poem. While the explications of the images on this page follow the same disjointed pattern of organization as Eliot’s images themselves, I hope to show that while each image or image cluster are distinct and seemingly unrelated, they are tied together though thematic elements.
Through his use of imagery and allusion in this poem, Eliot deals with themes that revolve around the fragile and self-conscious human condition, touching on the ideas of inadequacy, sexual anxiety and fear of mortality.Listen to “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”Thinning and BaldnessWith a bald spot in the middle of my hair-They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin-They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!” (40-44)The reoccurring image of baldness, and furthermore Prufrock’s obsessive anxiety about his own thinning hair, draws the reader’s attention to the theme of self-consciousness in this poem.
As mentioned by critic Margaret Blum, Prufrock alludes to his own baldness or thinning hair on four different occasions during his dramatic monologue. Prufrock’s anxiety about his own baldness, and also about the feebleness of his body, can be related to his obsessive fear regarding aging and death. This theme is again echoed as Prufrock proclaims: “I have seen the Eternal footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short I was afraid” (lines 85-86). Here, Prufrock expresses the belief that death itself mocks him in his old age. Through this passage, Eliot again displays Prufrock’s self-consciousness and fear as he nears the end of his life. The protagonist’s constant introspection and anxiety about his own death develops the theme of the mortality and fragility of human life.
Prufrock’s apparent concern with his image and the way in which he is perceived by the guests at the party also serves to highlight his difficulties and anxieties regarding human interaction- a theme that is echoed throughout the poem in various other images. MichelangeloIn the room the women come and goTalking of Michelangelo (13-14)This repeated mention of Michelangelo by the women in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” serves as more than just a representation of the idle chatter of the attendees of the tea party. This allusion highlights the theme of sexual anxiety as suggested by Tepper in her article “Nation and Eros.” Michelangelo, a world-renown painter, sculptor and poet, serves as a model of the quintessential “Renaissance man”, the male ideal for perfection. An image also associated with Michelangelo is his sculpture of David, considered to be the embodiment of male physical perfection.
As discussed in terms of Prufrock’s fear of aging and death, he also faces severe sexual anxiety when faced with this idea of this paradigm for the perfect male and his own inadequacy. Unable to compare with Michelangelo’s status as a Renaissance man or David’s standard of physical perfection, Prufrock turns self-conciously inward to obsess over his own “decisions and revisions” and the way in which he appears to members of the opposite sex. In many ways, as this allusion and Prufrock’s reaction demonstrate, this poem deals with the inherent inadequacy we experience and the anxiety we feel as human beings interacting with one another. Adding to the previously discussed themes of mortality and fragility, the allusion to Michelangelo and Prufrock’s inability to compare with the male ideal display the self-consciousness that comes with human interaction. Individual Female Body PartsAnd I have known the eyes already, known them all-The eyes that fix you in a formulated phraseAnd I have known the arms already, known them all-Arms that are braceleted and white and bareArms lie along a table, or wrap around a shawl.