Wilhelm Dilthey: The Alienation Of Life

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.

American born poet, T.S. Eliot reflects modernistic ideas of isolation, individual perception and human consciousness in his many poems. His poems express the disillusionment of the post–World War I generation with both literary and social values and traditions. In one of Eliot’s most famous poems, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” which was published in 1915, a speaker who is very unhappy with his life takes readers on a journey through the hell he is living in. In this journey, Prufrock criticizes the well-dressed, upstanding citizens who love their material pleasures more than they love other people, while explaining he feels ostracized from the society of women. Eliot’s use of isolation, human consciousness and individual perception is quite evident in his dramatic monologue within the story of J. Alfred Prufrock. Prufrock wants to be seen as a normal citizen who can find friends or a lover, but his anxiety-driven isolation forces him to live a life that relates more to Hell than paradise. In over examining every fine detail of his life, Prufrock perceives himself as useless and even a waste of life. By using many poetic devices including repetition, personification, and imagery Eliot drives readers to feel the painful reality of Prufrock’s life. In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” T.S Eliot uses modernistic ideas and poetic devices to portray how Prufrock’s life relates to Hell while simultaneously criticizing social aspects of the younger post–World War I generation.

This will to meaning is the culmination of our developmental process. To cultivate an individual’s capacity to find meaning in their life is the greatest goal, and the source of mankind’s anxiety and neuroses. We all wish to find the meaning within our life, and are unfulfilled when we miss the mark. But according to Frankl, there is always meaning in life, in every single moment, from one to the next we all are capable of making a choice about ourselves, and beyond that, have a responsibility to do so. Even with the transitory nature of our existence and hopelessness in the face of certain death, there is still meaning to be found, there is still freedom to be earned.

In T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, the speaker, Prufrock feels alienated

Poetry can sometimes allow one to explore the unknown. However, in some works of poetry, one can realise that some known ideas or values remain relevant to current society. This is certainly applicable to T.S. Eliot’s poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Rhapsody on a Windy Night. Eliot’s manipulation of poetic techniques in both these poems allows the responder to realise that some ideas prevail in both modern and post-modern society. These poems explore the unknown phenomena of the obscurity regarding the purpose and meaning of life. This unknown phenomena causes the persona in both texts to resort to a sense of isolation or alienation. Eliot uses poetic techniques such as metaphors and personification to convey his ideas.

We often tend to think that some people’s lives are more meaningful to others or feel as if we are missing something more difficult to get a handle on. Meaning is a word we look at in the search

In this quote Dillard is analyzing self-awareness and the gift of life. She explains that there is no reason for one to want to stop transitions in life such as growing up and becoming aware since they develop a new sense of understanding from it. Understanding is viewed as a gift that all should be open to receiving as it does not erase our memories, but helps enrich them since we will understand our settings in a different light.

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

Nagel also adds the fact that when the experiences of life are put forth, this state itself is still positive, and not just simply neutral. I feel the conflict that life’s purpose is found in the opportunity to visualize future experiences, regardless the type of those experiences, and the removal of this possibility being evil, seems to weaken the importance of experience itself. Life is not the accumulation of good or bad experiences, however, life has a value much greater than that measured by the existence of the organic body. Life is intrinsically valuable, and not based on mere existence for the most part. The value of life is based on countless possibilities and the significance of such possibilities is equally important. The value of life is naturally changed through the process of living. An individual’s life is enhanced and weakened by the nature of his or her experiences. The fact that the ability to seek an individual’s developmental interest adds a significant amount of value to the quality of their existence. It is through the pursuit of the arts, education, travel, religion, and many other factors that individuals are able to gain a much better understanding and appreciation of life. Nagel further calls attention to some significant observations pertaining to the value of life. The value of life and its content does not attach to mere organic survival. Nagel shows this by giving an example of death and the state of being in a coma. Being in coma, death would rather be ideal because there would be no further life experiences acquired and death would be just a way to alleviate or escape. Another observation Nagel states is, “like most goods, this can be multiplied by time: more is better than less.” In other words, the value can gradually become greater as time

In the struggle of everyday life, taking a somewhat small risk can sometimes feel like an incredibly daunting task. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot describes one such experience as a man, Prufrock, describes his evening with a woman with whom he’d like to be in a relationship with. However the task of bringing this up to the woman appears too daunting for Prufrock, and as his insecurities overtake him, he fails to gather the courage to ask her. “The use of allusion in the love song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by Andrew McCulloch analyzes several literary allusions throughout “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and eventually comes to the conclusion that only those who relate to the poem will gain full emotional satisfaction from it. The article begins by giving a brief description of modernism in literature and how “The Love Song Of J.

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

She contends that one needs to be actively engaged in life, more specifically being actively engaged in a worthwhile project, in order for that life to garner any meaning. Objective factors produce meaning but this view asserts that subjective factors (e.g. cognizance, emotion, etc.) should not be excluded because these factors are themselves liable to produce meaningfulness when interacting with objective conditions.

Eliot’s earliest work, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, set the bar for Modernisms exemplification of Man and his Modern Masculinity. This was done by incorporating Symbolism, and Imagism along with looking past the profound facts, and into the subconscious (Freud).

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 continuously hesitates while attempting to do so. This poem demonstrates a theme of fragmentation, which is a theme that we can see throughout the entire

The abstract idea of life cannot be explained by such simple ideas as being animated, breathing, or speaking. Ordinary machines in this century can perform all of these basic functions. The quandary with defining death is not as abstract and elusive as that of life. The problem of defining life and death has plagued philosophers and the religious bodies for thousands of years for one reason; each philosophy or religion has tried to define the meaning of life and death from only their certain perspective. The seemingly appropriate approach to this problem would be to understand the ideas presented in various philosophies and religions and through this knowledge create a new definition for each idea of life