Gerontion by T.S. Eliot Essay

The first stanza introduces Prufrock’s isolation, as epitomized metaphorically by “half-deserted streets” (4): while empty streets imply solitude, Eliot’s diction emphasize Prufrock having been abandoned by the other “half” needed for a relationship or an “argument” (8). Hoping for a companion, Prufrock speaks to the reader when

The narrator shares this story from his youth in the words of an educated man. His actions as a teen are in stark contrast to his phraseology as an adult. Early in the story, he viewed “nature” as sex, drugs and rock and roll (Boyle 112-113). However, as the story ends and the turmoil subsides, the narrator sees nature for the first time, through the eyes of a person matured by this traumatic experience. The “sun firing buds and opening blossoms” replaced the once revered beer and

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.

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

“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth, a poem that discloses the relationship between nature and human beings: how nature can affect one’s emotion and behavior with its motion and sound. The words the author adopted in this poem are interconnected and related to each other. They are simple yet profound, letting us understand how much William Wordsworth related his works to nature and the universe. It also explained to us why William Wordsworth is one of the greatest and the most influential English romantic poets in history. As Robert DiYanni says in his book, “with much of Wordsworth’s poetry, this lyric reflects his deep love of nature, his vision of a unified

J. Alfred Prufrock constantly lived in fear, in fear of life and death. T. S. Eliot divided his classic poem into three equally important sections. Each division provided the reader with insight into the mental structure of J. Alfred Prufrock. In actuality, Prufrock maintained a good heart and a worthy instinct, but he never seemed to truly exist. A false shadow hung over his existence. Prufrock never allowed himself to actually live. He had no ambitions that would drive him to succeed. The poem is a silent cry for help from Prufrock. In each section, T. S. Eliot provided his audience with vague attempts to understand J. Alfred Prufrock. Each individual reader can only interpret these

In the poems “The Love Song by J. Alfred Prufrock,” written in 1910, published in 1915, and “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” written in 1917, both of which were written by poet and literary-critic T. S. Eliot, the symbolism and imagery of the women represented in mythological means, the locations and landscapes that both protagonists wander through or plan on going to, and the nature that is used in both poems are very similar, yet uniquely different. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is about a man with low self-confidence worrying about going to a party in the evening where he is sure that the women there with reject and ridicule him; “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” is about a man wandering his way back in the early hours of the morning

            Though he was a modernist I believe this poem is a reflection of what he saw during the Victorian period.  He says, "Do I dare/Disturb the universe?" (Eliot, Longman 2419 ll. 45-46).  He speaks here, not of the universe as you and I think -- a celestial body -- but of the universe in the sense of the Victorian period itself.  The world where everything is a mask of propriety, manners, and tradition; this can be seen in his reference to the popular Victorian custom of afternoon tea, "Before the taking of tea and toast."  (Eliot, Longman 2419 l. 34).  A word or simple action could topple a system as balanced as this one and Prufrock struggles with the question, "Do I dare?" (Eliot, Longman 2419 l. 38).  Does he dare to disturb the Victorian culture with what he has seen?  His struggle is represented by the yellow smoke/fog.  This represents

Unlike Oedipus, the character in T.S. Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is timid, insecure and indecisive. Throughout the poem, Prufrock is faced with a decision to approach a woman he has developed a liking to, or remain looking out a lonely window drowning his self consciousness in an ocean of self doubt. He wants to ask her the overwhelming question, but instead he purposefully avoids the woman by having personal detour conversations with himself about his self image. The entire poem is laced with Prufrock asking himself questions. He asks “Do I dare disturb the universe?”(Eliot) as if the whole world will come crashing down if he simply talks to her. He wants to wait for the right time, but in the same thought, he knows his years are running out; he mentions his bald spot and thin arms. Prufrock is so consumed with himself and how others might portray or judge him, that it is paralyzing him from social activities and gatherings. He is going through a mid life crisis that he may have brought on himself by leading an unproductive, bland life and his lack of

T.S.Eliot wrote Prufrock poem six years before its publication in the Egoist 1917. From the first glance at the poem one can figure out the personal touches of its writer who genuinely described the days and nights of the places, streets and cities that he had been to. It probably was Eliot himself to nourish such rich observations from his abundant experience; Mathiessen describes it as “Prufrock seems to spring from Eliot’s detached super cultivated fastidious young man from Harvard; (Mathiessen, 1958, 59).

The first setting is the sky described “Like a patient etherized upon a table” (line 3). This meaningful illustration can also be used to describe Prufrock’s current dilemma. His hesitance causes his inability to act just as a patient would be if he or she was etherized or desensitized. Eliot’s depiction of the city is also done in a creatively, symbolic way. In “An overview of ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’”, Marisa Pagnattaro states that the setting contains a “seductive feline tone”. He uses personification to give a yellow fog catlike qualities such as “Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening / Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains” (Eliot 17-18). This enticing mood is used to pair with the women that Prufrock is interested in. T.S. Eliot ends his poem with another use of imagery by saying “Combing the white hair of the waves blown back / When the wind blows the water white and black” (Eliot 127-28). This detailed description of Prufrock’s fantasy helps the readers visualize what he desires. It is also ironic to see how different his whimsical dream is to his lonesome

Message of Hope in Eliot's The Waste Land, Gerontion, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

As one of America's first modernist poets, T. S. Eliot's unique style and subject matter would have a dramatic influence on writers for the century to come. Born in 1888 in St. Louis Mo. at the tail end of the "Cowboy era" he grew up in the more civilized industrial era of the early 20th century, a time of the Wright Brothers and Henry Ford. The Eliot family was endowed with some of the best intellectual and political connections in America of that time, and as a result went to only the best schools. By 1906 he was a freshman in Harvard, finishing his bachelors in only 3 years and studying philosophy in France from 1910 to 1914, the outbreak of war. In 1915 the verse magazine Poetry published Eliot's first notable piece, 'The

T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is inhabited by both a richly developed world and character and one is able to categorize the spaces in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to correspond to Prufrock’s mind. Eliot uses the architecture of the three locations described in the text to explore parts of Prufrock's mind in the Freudian categories of id, ego, and super-ego; the city that is described becomes the Ego, the room where he encounters women his Id and the imagined ocean spaces his Super Ego.

Occasionally, man’s metaphysical reality become so cumbersome, his only respite is found in creating an allusion of tranquility. Perhaps this desire to escape social chaos was the inspiration of many Romantic writers to retreat into the quietude of nature. Although it was not uncommon to identify similar ideals in varies works at this time, finding the same perspective on natures representation was not. Two poem in particular written by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, demonstrate this by emphasizing the relationship nature has in humanities moral development. However, they do so by orchestrating entirely different scenarios, where the characters experience contrasting perspectives natures power.