New Criticism and Eliot's Prufrock
Eliot's use of tone, imagery and symbol in "Prufrock" allows him to create a poem that does two things at once: on the one hand it mocks modern culture and on the other hand it impresses upon the reader the fact that it is okay to reject all of this and search for the deeper somethingness -- that higher question that no one seems to want to ask. This paper will show how the poem uses irony, tone, image and symbol to convey a sense of the emptiness of modern culture to the reader using a seductive, fun, hypnotic way with words.
The tone of Eliot's "Prufrock" is overwhelmingly ironic: the poem plays up the tone of triviality while simultaneously skewering the triviality of the characters it describes. The poem lures the reader to the precipice of sanity -- pointing out the insanity and utter emptiness of modern culture and prompting the reader to ask a profound question -- but just when that is about to happen, the narrator dismisses the question with, "Oh do not ask, 'What is it?' / Let us go and make our visit." This attitude is reflective of the type of non-thinking, non-critical attitude of the people who go to see the Michelangelo at the art museum. They are interested only in the experience of going to see it -- they are socializing, not really critically looking at the art and connecting the art to culture or culture to meaning or meaning to belief/principles. They are wandering, free floating, as though cut off from all moorings. They are like the streets described in the first stanza -- "tedious" and "insidious" because they both distract from the all-important underlying question being presented the reader in this mocking...
.. I grow old...' are the evidence of the impending fear of death. One unusual part of the poem is how Eliot, or Prufrock, puts himself into a role in one of Shakespeare's plays and then admits that he is no Hamlet by saying 'No! I am not the Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be.' Although I am guessing, I feel that Eliot was trying to say that Shakespeare's
Prufrock also distances himself from the people at the tea, saying they talk of "Michelangelo," which seems to say he has little in common with them. A man who loves a woman will try to find things in common with her to enjoy her company. This man instead finds things that make them different. Finally, there is an underlying gloomy theme throughout the poem that cannot point to love. Prufrock
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot, and the Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost are two poems that imagine how life might be if the narrator had acted differently. However, the two poems are almost opposites in their intent and impact. Eliot's poem is a lamentation over a life not lived, over a failure to act. Frost's poem is a celebration over an unconventional life bravely
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliott The opening epigraph from Dante's Inferno in T.S. Eliott's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Pruforck" suggests that Prufrock, like Count Guido da Montefeltro, is giving a visitor a tour of his own personal hell. Also, at the beginning and end of the first stanza, Prufrock invites the reader to go with him to find the answer that he is trying
Ultimately, as his dialogue continues, it becomes clear that Prufrock is afraid. He is afraid of growing old, of ending up alone, and of being ridiculous and a fool because he did not to back to the woman he loved and make the relationship right. Eliot writes, "At times, indeed, almost ridiculous -- / Almost, at times, the Fool" (Eliot 118-119). Prufrock then is a sad and lonely character
Love Song" By Joseph Brodsky Losip Aleksandrovich Brodsky, alias Joseph Brodsky, lived between 1940 and 1996. His place of birth was Leningrad, Russia (USSR), and he spent his last moments in the U.S.A. (Brooklyn, New York). He was a poet of Soviet-Russian-American origin. In 1987, he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature, and in 1991, he gained the title of Poet Laureate from the Congress Library. Brodsky wrote a poem
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