He continues, talking frequently about her arms, braceleted and bare, even noting he has noticed the light brown hair in the lamplight Eliot 735. Dramatic monologues are similar to soliloquies in plays. The irony here lies in the speech actually being read in the world by millions of people. Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. Prufrock twice refers to his balding head, describes his plain, middle-aged clothing, and draws us into his point-of-view of the social world. And how should I begin? This all brings into view this role of the aging protagonist. The world is transitory, half-broken, unpopulated, and about to collapse.
However, unlike Romantic poetry, its chief concern was not the expression of emotion. End your research paper worries in less than 5 Minutes! To have squeezed the universe into a ball. Dante faces the spirit of one hellbound Guido da Montefeltro, a false advisor, and the two trade questions and answers. That's really what Eliot is best at: elevating something that is normal, even potentially pathetic, into something that can be beautiful. Gateways to World Literature: Volume 2: The Seventeenth Century to Today, edited by David Damrosch.
It may represent societal values, lingering in Prufrock's mind despite his desperate attempts at escape. The Modernists felt their writing should mirror their fractured and chaotic world. He has heard them talk for years and knows only fashion, appearance, art, and style are deemed worthy of discussion. Prufrock talks compulsively of the party scene, but actually speaks to no one. Prufrock overcoming his crippling shyness. I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be. It has since been immortalized in popular culture in everything from books to Simpsons episodes.
This is a place where he could understand his insecurity and relate it in poetic form. The questions in the poem concern meaning in the face of mortality. The Love Song of J. So, you can see this contrast of being old and having all these questions that stay unresolved. In this case, the personality of Alfred J. There's also variations on these questions and comments that come throughout it.
Critics are divided as to the symbolism of the yellow smog. His social anxiety assumes more importance in the middle part of the poem. The imagery of the journey through the city is described as pointed to lead the reader and more accurately Prufrock to an overwhelming question. Note the reference to the Andrew Marvell poem To His Coy Mistress in line 23 and Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night in line 52 and Prince Hamlet in line 111. Rather than hurrying his lady, Prufrock makes excuses for himself; he assures himself there will be time to act, although his repetitive, paralytic nature has so far belied that.
The use of enjambment, the running over of lines, further conveys the labyrinthine spatiality of the city. Do I dare to eat a peach? Rather, modernist writers were interested in larger questions of self and meaning in a universal context. The epigraph is a quotation from Dante's Inferno 27. He makes a note of her outside of the writhing masses that judge him, hoping she would notice he has misspoken and forgive him regardless, as seen in lines 97 - 110. It uses this beautiful imagery to describe this mundane thing, and that really is something that comes up throughout Prufrock but also throughout T. The second defining characteristic of this poem is its use of fragmentation and juxtaposition.
But this is fine with him, because he and his world are once again at a comfortable place. Also, he has a huge, life-altering question to ask you. A really cool example of that is these three lines: And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea You can see there all of these -isions. The sense of time, time, time, presses upon the reader, and the repetition of the world in fact makes the reader more conscious of the passing of the minutes, rather than less. ” Do I dare Disturb the universe? He is afraid that his reputation will be ruined. Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep tired or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.
He convinces himself that there is time, so there is no need to rush into action. Alfred Prufrock begins with a sense of irony in its title. He describes the street scene and notes a social gathering of women discussing Renaissance artist Michelangelo. However, the evening is transformed into a patient who is drugged on a table and incapable of action, as if prepared for symbolic surgery. Eliot's Prufrock So, we're learning about the The Love Song of J. The evening is the end of the day, which is inevitably consumed by night, just as old age must give way to death.
This shifting, repetitive poem is a parody of a love song; it flows then stumbles and hesitates its way through the life of a middle aged male who can't decide where he stands in the world. In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? While it also serves to remind the reader of the setting, this phrase stops the poem in mire. Say it a couple times - Prufrock, Prufrock, Prufrock. Finally, he brings us back into the conversation.