The Wasteland Essay

“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.

Through choice of detail and diction, Edith Wharton justifies Frome’s adultery by juxtaposing the warm, charismatic nature of Mattie to the cold, barren one of Zeena. While his wife speaks in a “monotonous” (129) “flat whine” (32) her cousin’s “suffuse[s] him with joy” (44). Despite the fact that both women are frail and sickly, Zeena’s “puckered throat” and “protruding wrists” (47) disgusts Ethan, while Mattie is so “small and weak-looking that…it wr[i]ng[s] his heart” (106). Throughout the novel, Wharton’s choice of detail drastically contrasts the two women, one a vivacious, vigorous beauty, the other a walking, whining corpse. From their physical looks alone, Zeena is hard to love—sterile and dark—while Mattie—fertile and warm—is easy to. The author intentionally feeds this bias, allowing the readers to feel the same temptation that Frome has in the novel. However, he

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

Throughout both ‘Engleby’ and ‘Selected Poems’ there is a prevailing sense of ‘apprehension of the tenuousness of human existence’ which is evident in the protagonists’ confining inability to communicate with the world around them, as seen in Prufrock’s agonised call, ‘so how should I presume?’. ‘The Wasteland’ was written by Eliot to ‘address the fragmentation and alienation characteristic of [contemporary] culture’, questioning mankind’s ability to move forward into cohesiveness despite the ‘more pronounced sense of disillusionment and cynicism’ which came about as a ‘direct

T.S. Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” illustrates the poet’s fear of the fragmentation of modern society. In the poem, Eliot creates the persona of his speaker, J. Alfred Prufrock. Prufrock is speaking to an unknown listener. The persona of Prufrock is Eliot’s interpretation of Western society and its impotency at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. His views are modernistic, which idolize the classical forms while incorporating new ideas about psychology and the subconscious. Eliot illustrates his contempt for the faithlessness of modern society by illustrating its fragmentation with synecdoche, characterization of Prufrock, and allusions to literary traditions throughout the narrative. In his poem, Eliot illustrates his view of a great tradition that he is witnessing as it falls apart.

A woman in the Victorian era was good for few things – marriage being of the upmost importance. When married, a woman needed to pure of sexual experiences and desires, for only men had sexual needs to be fulfilled. If a woman were “ruined,” or not a virgin, she was unmarriageable. Few outlets were available unmarried women to survive, and many of them turned to prostitution. We shall see the image of a ruined woman presented by Christina Rossetti in “The Goblin Market,” and find the conflicting images of a prostitute in D. G. Rossetti’s “Jenny” and Thomas Hardy’s “The Ruined Maid.”

In the story Teenage Wasteland, Donny is kind of a dump. Donny is one of those bad kids that gets into trouble all the time. His parents don’t realise where he’s going until the time when the story takes place. His mom gets him a tutor, who lets him do kind of whatever he wants, so he ends up getting expelled from school. The takeaway of this story is that you should try hard in school and life.

T.S. Eliot was an outstanding author and an exemplary representation of the ideas of modernism. "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. Prufrock desires to speak to a woman about his love for her, but he hesitates the entire way there. In this poem, the theme I have chosen is fragmentation, which we can see throughout the entire structure of the work. It 's evidenced by not only his writing style, but the use of space and time and the personality of Prufrock.

During this time, women were often looked at as less than men in reference to intelligence, capability, and overall strength. Reading this work from the perspective of a woman during that time presents an interesting thought, which is the importance of self-expression. Later on as the wife continues to get worse, she expresses again of her desire to write to ease her mind and pain, “I think sometimes that I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve me the press of ideas and rest me” (420). Had the perspective been altered in any way, the readers would not have discovered the same message because the other character is a man, and men were free to express themselves however they wished. Women were limited, which is why the point of view used developed this central

The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock is a long and challenging poem that seems rather disjointed and confusing upon first reading. It seems as though us readers will never understand the deeper meaning of the poem without getting inside Eliot's head and seeing his thought process for ourselves. However, through digging deeper and examining the piece closer we can find that this is meant to be an ironic and tragic tale of a man who feels isolated and incapable of decisive action. It is ironically called a "love song" because Prufrock longs to profess love and affection to a woman, but is too afraid to do it.

So, I had to find a work of literature out of my text book and, from the text, connect a controversy. Having trouble finding a text that provides not only a controversy that I feel capable of discussing, but also provides enough context to support it, I came across the short story “Teenage Wasteland” by Anne Tyler. The story presents a simple and common scenario where a support system fails to actually provide any real assistance, much like our many broken programs in America. “Teenage Wasteland” mirrors parents failing to raise their children, our school systems failing to teach our children, and our court system failing to reeducate these “adult” children.

T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” introduces a critique of masculinity and argues that a state of paralysis is created in modern society through anxiety and self-consciousness. Over time, Prufrock’s self-awareness heightens and he fails to ask the “overwhelming question” (16). Prufrock does not embody the stereotypical traits of a male and as a result leaves himself “[a]lmost, at times, the [f]ool” (125). Through repetition, imagery and allusions, Eliot emphasizes the importance of masculinity and suggests the moment of Prufrock’s realization is the moment he “drown[s]” (137).

T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” draws attention to the idea that time is of the essence. On the surface, Prufrock is portrayed as a man who is incapable of making decisions and lacks self-confidence. This is evident through his passive nature, where he continuously delays having to talk to women because he believes there is enough time. Written in the era of modernism, the reader is capable of unraveling that the poem’s true purpose was not only to show Prufrock’s inability to make decisions when it comes to love, but to show the desolation that one faces in times of a modernistic transition. Eliot depicts Prufrock’s transition phase through a gloomy and solemn tone, incorporating imagery, metaphor and synecdoche to

To first answer the former, Barbin's actions suggest that the will for sexual repression breeds obsession. Beginning with the yearning for the touch of her Mother Superiors and ending in the affair with Sara, Barbin did little to curb her sexual desires, or as she referred to them, "...the terrible sickness of the unknown."6 Now paying attention to the latter question raised, Barbin and Sara are able to pervade discovery due to the nineteenth century's general acceptance of female eroticism within platonic friendships; "society did not find erotic passion between married women emotionally unnatural or socially disruptive."7 This is perhaps indicative of reluctance to consider a relationship's validity without the presence of a male for reproduction, another consequence of the nineteenth century's heightened sense of gender

In T.S. Eliot’s most famous poem The Wasteland, a bleak picture of post-war London civilization is illuminated. The inhabitants of Eliot’s wasteland are living in a morally bankrupt and spiritually lost society. Through fragmented narration, Eliot recalls tales of lost love, misplaced lust, forgone spirituality, fruitless pilgrimages, and the “living dead”- those who shuffle through life without a care. These tales are the personal attempts of each person to fulfill the desires which plague them, though none ever stop to consider that what they want may not be what they need, nor do they consider why it is they feel they must do these things. Through studies in Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic perspective