Essay_-_Love_Song_J._Alfred_Prufrock

T.S. Eliot Essay Q) The ordinary man’s experience, Eliot argued, is ‘chaotic, irregular, and fragmentary.’ To what extend does this statement reflect your experience of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Intro: The main figures in T.S. Eliot’s poem’s, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and “Preludes,” undergoes a conscious exploration of themselves. This invites readers to experience his dismantling personality which epitomises Eliot’s vision of the modern urban man, and in turn, the modern world. Prufrock’s journey is not based around a self-consciousness problem, but a more deeply philosophical dilemma, as he is paralysed by his hectic sense of time. His experience is also both fragmentary and irregular, living in a divided city amongst his own disjointed and irregular mind and voice. Prelude’s follows the deep consciousness of a man amongst a hopeless and depressed society which lacks meaning. Its people are entrapped in a constant mechanical process that lacks meaning and vividness. Paragraph 1: Within the opening stanzas, one key term in modernist literature, fragmentation is displayed through Eliot’s use of imagery. * He has accumulated numerous and various words, images and sounds to describe Prufrock’s city in a chaotic effect. * Prufrock lives in a city that is growing increasingly modern; afraid or unable to change with it. This suffocation is observed through his technique “objective correlative” (grafting emotional meaning onto otherwise concrete objects); as the fog creeps up on the street like a cat “The yellow fog rubs its back upon the window panes.” * Similes present the city as a disorderly and a scattered collection of "Streets that follow like a tedious argument;" that are unattractive and seedy, “one-night cheap hotels.” This division amongst the city also interrelates with our insight into Prufrock’s confused mind and voice. Paragraph 2: His mind is perhaps more easily represented; by an uneven train of thought, interrupted by self-interrogation and self-consciousness, looping back on itself. * Prufrock continually compares the high achievements of precedent western culture with the lacking modern society. For example, Prufrock’s voice, “I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be,” illustrates that there is no scope for Hamlet-like figure in this world. * Furthermore, the continual use of the line, “In the room, the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo,” in between stanzas, reaffirms that all society can do is talk about the past. These echoes also indicate Prufrock's entrapment in the present tense as he becomes a casualty of his own humanity. Prufrock’s journey is also frenzied with an obsession for time, as he ages. * This fixation over time contributes to his paralysis as he makes innumerable conceit references to his age; like “A bold spot in the middle of my hair,” highlighting his fear of the future. In an attempt to make him-self feel young again, “I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled,” Prufrock juxtaposes this worthless comment, with the inevitable stage of growing old. * In effect, he has paralysed himself, through his self-consciousness, which also roots itself in the poem's structure. Early in the poem, Prufrock describes the shallow social necessities in place of significance, “Time for visions, before the taking of toast and tea.” He then becomes a victim of his own society, through his ironic comment, “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” Paragraph 3: introduces the tone of the poem, in which society as corrupt and desolate going through a cycle of meaningless routine. * The description of a typical street from an omniscient point of view, strengthens this impression through alliteration of the “s” and “b” sound. Words like “smoky days and.. showers beat on broken blinds,” evoke our sense of smell and presents the image of a souless and unloving world. * Even nature offers no succour, but rather dead remnants of days and seasons past, “Of withered leaves by your feet.” * In the initial prsonififed line of the second stanza, the word “consciousness,” promises something more than a worthless society, and to break it free from the bleakness, that is their world. Although the proceeding line, “Faint smells of staler beers,” destroys this suggestion, as modern day society is presented as miserable, through the depressant, beer. Paragraph 4: In stanza 3, the picture painted by previous stanzas, is highlighted through a woman’s epiphany. * “I had such visions of the street, which hardly understands,” due to a subversive revelation, “Raising dingy shades.” This opinion is presented as a personal view of the whole of society, as the women represents just one of a “Thousand distorted images.” * Also, the accumulation of “four and five and six o’clock” infers a society’s rhythmic and busy ongoing routine, like in a mechanical process. * Furthermore, in the dramatic final lines on the poem, “assured of certain certainties” illustrates the pre-existing life society must endevour. Additionally, one of the final words, “Revolves,” expressed in a savage tone, demonstrates that society is still undergoing a continuous and meaningless process. In both poems, the conscious explorations of the protagonists illustrate how Eliot’s use of poetry is over all, disturbing. This is achieved through the confusing sense of time in Prufrock’s fragmented mind, whilst living in a disjointed city; and in Preludes, via the constant mechanical process, undertaken by society.