A Supermarket In California Analysis

Social Isolation and Loneliness
Social isolation has become much more common in a society that constantly tries to stereotype us. The poems, “A Supermarket in California,” by Allen Ginsberg and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” by T.S. Eliot, display the way that loneliness is affecting people. In “A Supermarket in California” imagery is used heavily, while with “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” relies on personification to show the loneliness of isolation. Both poems use objects such as the lonely streets and night time to make the reader feel the isolation. In addition, they both use questions to get the readers thinking and feeling of how it is to be lonely. Eliot and Ginsberg both display the theme of how lonely it is to not be able to be yourself in a time or place it is not accepted. The differences in these poems lie in the way the authors that Ginsberg uses imagery and Eliot uses personification. In “A Supermarket in California,” Ginsberg is using imagery to give the reader a way of being there thus creating an emotional attachment to the idea of loneliness. In the lines, 19-20, “The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we’ll both be lonely.”

Both Ginsberg and Eliot use the empty streets and darkness because of the feeling of loneliness it brings to people. In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Eliot says, in lines 8-9, “Streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent” and in “A Supermarket in California,” Ginsberg says, “for I walked down the side streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon” (line 1-2). These quotes from the poems show how they both, as a whole, give the reader the feeling of loneliness and solitude. This is a successful technique for a poet to use because it makes the reader more invested in the story and more connected to the