Eliot 's The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock

We may never be given a second chance to do something daring ever again so we seize the day! However, people like in J. Alfred Prufrock make the attempt to do but it doesn’t work. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” written by T.S. Elliot, essentially is about a simple man that wishes to ask a question, although the question is never revealed, the reader is taken on journey the with the speaker, only to find that they have spent a lengthy amount of time of their lives without ever asking the question. Even more so, this poem is illustrates the idea that we must confront reality and take advantage or never take the chance. This claim is supported through poetic and rhetoric elements, such as repetition, and symbolism.

In his poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” T.S. Eliot subtly conveys a wide variety of Prufrock’s emotions; he creates pathos for the speaker by employing the “objective correlative,” which Eliot defines as “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events [that] shall be the formula of that particular emotion” (“Hamlet and His Problems”).

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot is not a love song at all—but an insight into the mind of an extremely self-conscious, middle-aged man. Prufrock struggles in coping with the world he is living in—a world where his differences make him feel lonely and alienated. Eliot uses allusions and imagery, characterization, and the society Prufrock lives in to present how Prufrock partly contributes to his own alienation. Our ability of self-awareness separates us from other species, making humans more intelligent and giving people the upper hand in social settings, but, like Prufrock, it can sometimes cause us to feel alienated.

To take these lines a little further, this author finds it intriguing that Mckay uses the history of America to voice his outrage at the injustice. To Americans, a rebel is a powerful figure, after all it was a group of rebels who defied the king of England in order to gain independence. Fighting against a tyrannical power to gain independence; at their very core, the ideals are the same. McKay uses Americas very history as a powerful eye opener against the injustice against the African American community, which is the same in context to the injustice America’s founding fathers faced when building this country.

When 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. 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 and self-defeating thoughts. With desolate imagery, a tone that is known through the ages and delicate diction we see a man who is insecure, tentative and completely fearful.

Claude McKay’s poems reflect on American culture during a specific time in history, known as Harlem Renaissance. A time where racism was predominately a way of living for many, this was a beneficial time in history for African Americans. Bringing blacks together in a new movement that had not been present in America. Development in which blacks emphasized themselves by taking on their racial identity. It was a time period in which the black community helped each other to be able to express themselves as who they truly are, creating a true African American visual doing so

McKay emphasizes that his deep hatred for the “White City” is due to the oppression he receives from white-skinned people for being African American; however this hatred is hidden from the world as he is perceived as an isolated minority in this “White City”. The intensity of McKay’s hatred is displayed in the personification of the “dark Passion that fills [his] every mood”(6). The first letter in the diction “Passion” is capitalized, thus personifying it to be representation of the

In the poem ,“America”, Claude McKay uses figurative language and diction to create a dark tone, a powerful empowering tone, and an optimistic tone. The theme of double consciousness of African-Americans is supported in the poem and the poem itself also connects to the purpose of the Harlem Renaissance which was to fight back racial hate and stereotypes with black empowerment.

An excerpt from the poem says, "Yet not to thy eternal resting-place/Shalt thou retire alone, …Thou shalt lie down/With patriarchs of the infant world --with kings, …"(31-37). This quote explains that when people die they are not alone; they lie down to rest with the people of the past. Later in the poem Bryant states, "All that breathe/Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh/When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care/Plod on, and each one as before will chase/His favorite phantom;" (60-64). He explains that all living things die and that life will continue after they die. In a following selection of the poem he says, "Yet these shall leave…And make their bed with thee…. matron and maid, /The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man-/Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, /By those, who in their turn shall follow them."(64-72). He states that one by one everyone will die. Eventually, everyone dies, and they live on through Nature in another form.

T.S. 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. Alfred Prufrock”, but through this poem, T.S. Eliot voices his social commentary about the world that

Written in the first half of the 20th century, “Let America Be America” is a poem that documents and responds to the oppressed state of the United States, in both the past and present. The poem is a plea for a return to the original principles of freedom that our country has seemingly forgotten. Additionally, the speaker sees America as the broken home to oppressed people who have lost sight of the ultimate goal of freedom and happiness. Although America is often perceived as the “land of the free,” Langston Hughes’s poem contradicts this ideology by not only painting a vivid picture of oppression in America but also by providing a desperate hope for the future.

T.S Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is an examination of human insecurity and folly, embodied in the title's J. Alfred Prufrock. Eliot's story of a man's "overwhelming question", his inability to ask it, and consequently, his mental rejection plays off the poem's many ambiguities, both structural and literal. Eliot uses these uncertainties to develop both the plot of the poem and the character of J. Alfred Prufrock.

McKay uses literary devices such as similes to make a comparisons expressing how the African-Americans were being treated. He does this to show the people what the oppressors view them as and what they should be viewed as. This forces the people to

In the line “I love this cultured hell that tests my youth” he uses an oxymoron because culture is not normally associated with hell. Conformity seems to be a big role in “America”. Mckay gives off the impression that America is very dominant when he exclaims “ Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood” in this sentence he uses a simile when he compares America to a flood which gives off the effect that he is submissive to what she wants, and would rather go with the flow instead of follow his own path (7). He later goes against what he stated when he says “yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,” this line comes across that he will stand up to her like a king does to his enemies when in the previous line he says the opposite (8). Mckay shows a very contradicting tone due to him going back on everything he says throughout the

T.S. Eliot, a notable twentieth century poet, wrote often about the modern man and his incapacity to make decisive movements. In his work entitled, 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'; he continues this theme allowing the reader to view the world as he sees it, a world of isolation and fear strangling the will of the modern man. The poem opens with a quoted passage from Dante's Inferno, an allusion to Dante's character who speaks from Hell only because he believes that the listener can not return to earth and thereby is impotent to act on the knowledge of his conversation. In his work, Eliot uses this quotation to foreshadow the idea that his