The love song of J.Alfred Prufrock

TS Eliot

• Eliot’s early poetry, including "Prufrock," deals with spiritually exhausted people who exist in the impersonal modern city.

• Prufrock is a representative character who cannot reconcile his thoughts and understanding with his feelings and will.

• The poem displays several levels of irony, the most important of which grows out of the vain, weak man's insights into his sterile life and his lack of will to change that life.

• The poem is replete with images of enervation and paralysis, such as the evening described as "etherized," immobile.

• Prufrock understands that he and his associates lack authenticity. One part of himself would like to startle them out of their meaningless lives, but to accomplish this he would have to risk disturbing his "universe," being rejected.

• The latter part of the poem captures his sense defeat for failing to act courageously. Eliot helped to set the modernist fashion for blending references to the classics with the most sordid type of realism, then expressing the blend in majestic language which seems to mock the subject.

Modernism as a literary movement is seen, in large part, as a reaction to the emergence of city life as a central force in society.

Modernism is a literary style that emerged after the First World War. At this point, people began to doubt everything they were supposed to believe in surrounding ideas associated with the government, politics, religion, and everyday societal norms. Trust in higher powers and authority figures began to falter, and the inability to sort through the chaos of these mixed emotions left people disheartened, confused, and angry.

This feeling of betrayal and uncertainty towards tradition influenced the writing of British authors between 1914-1919 both stylistically and in form. The Modernism movement then reached America in the 1920’s.

Juxtaposition, irony, comparisons, and satire are elements found in modernist writing.

The most obvious stylistic tool of the modernist writer is that it is often written in first person. Rather than a traditional story having a beginning, middle and end, modernist writing typically reads as a rant.

This can leave the reader slightly confused as to what they are supposed to take away from the work.

Juxtaposition could be used for example in a way to represent something that would be often times unseen, for example, a cat and a mouse as best friends.

Irony and satire are important tools for the modernist writer in aiding them to make fun of and point out faults in what they are writing about, normally problems within their society, whether it is governmental, political, or social ideas

• “As the poet said, 'Only God can make a tree' -- probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on”. Woody Allen

• “Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.” Woody Allen

Elizabeth rather wondered whether Miss Kilman could be hungry. It was her way of eating, eating with intensity, then looking, again and again, at a plate of sugared cakes on the table next to them; then, when a lady and a child sat down and the child took the cake, could Miss Kilman really mind it? Yes, Miss Kilman did mind it. She had wanted that cake -- the pink one. The pleasure left her, and then to be baffled even in that!

When people are happy they have a reserve, she had told Elizabeth, upon which to draw, whereas she was like a wheel without a tyre (she was fond of such metaphors), jolted by every pebble -- so she would say, staying on after the lesson, standing by the fire-place with her bag of books, her ‘satchel’, she called it, on a Tuesday morning, after the lesson was over. And she talked too about the war. After all, there were people who did not think the English invariably right. There were books. There were meetings. There were other points of view. Would Elizabeth like to come with her to So-and-so? (a most extraordinary-looking old man). Then Miss Kilman took her to some church in Kensington and they had tea with a clergyman. She had lent her books. Law, medicine, politics, all professions are open to women of your generation, said Miss Kilman. But for herself, her career was absolutely ruined, and was it her fault? Good gracious, said Elizabeth, no.

And her mother would come calling to say that a hamper had come from Bourton and would Miss Kilman like some flowers? To Miss Kilman she was always very, very nice, but Miss Kilman squashed the flowers all in a bunch, and hadn’t any small talk, and what interested Miss Kilman bored her mother, and Miss Kilman and she were terrible together; and Miss Kilman swelled and looked very plain, but Miss Kilman was frightfully clever. Elizabeth had never thought about the poor. They lived with everything they wanted, -- her mother had breakfast in bed every day; Lucy carried it up; and she liked old women because they were Duchesses, and being descended from some Lord. But Miss Kilman said (one of those Tuesday mornings when the lesson was over), ‘My grand¬father kept an oil and colour shop in Kensington.’ Miss Kilman was quite different from any one she knew; she made one feel so small.

Miss Kilman took another cup of tea. Elizabeth, with her oriental bearing, her inscrutable mystery, sat perfectly upright; no, she did not want anything more. She looked for her gloves -- her white gloves. They were under the table. Ah, but she must go! Miss Kilman could not let her go! this youth that was so beautiful! this girl, whom she genuinely loved! Her large hand opened and shut on the table.Extract from Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolfe

Dorothy’s Dream Sheldon Greenburg

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