C.S. Lewis had stated once, "Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one. To love is to be vulnerable." Evidence throughout T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, explains why a man’s true self and characterization is hidden behind an impassable frame unintentionally destroying his personality. The poem shows how J. Alfred Prufrock, a respectful man, is openly exposed which can show the readers that his sentimental needs can serve as a platform for his connotation of life.
The elegy which is an allusion to Dante’s Inferno is a counter to the question that Is mentioned throughout the poem “Who are you?” This question of self-identity is a major theme of the poem. Prufrocks depiction doubts that his true identity and self is going to be shown at the tea party that he is about to attend. Due to this question of who are you Prufrock will only breeze through this idea, “do not ask, ‘What is it?’ (11-12).
Another allusion is referring to Hamlet. Prufrock has spent most of the poem wondering if he should disturb the universe by asking a question to a women, contemplating if he should ask her or not. He wonders if asking this question is going to be worth it in the end just to have her
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Alfred Prufrock," T. S. Eliot discovers a man who will not accept his greatest need. The irony of Prufrock rejecting to share himself, shortening his emotional growth, is especially sharp at the end of the poem. Prufrock suddenly states his vision of himself and shows the reader the end results of life in this shell which he has been enclosed in. He dimly states, "I grow old. I grow old." (120) and he asks himself crazy and irrelevant questions, "Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?" (123). He has become so worried with anyone else seeing a little part of the self behind his prepared face and shell that he worries about
The two poems contrast with each other in their character and in meaning. While Prufrock remains strongly self conscious and questions his own existence, the man in Marvell’s poem is portrayed as a confident bachelor ready to make the most of the time he has. This contrast makes allusions
Prufrock’s relationship with women, spoiled by detachment and fear, is the source of his crippling insecurity, anxiety, and distress, which limits his ability to socialize and further isolates him from the world beyond his torturous mind. Alfred Prufrock’s generalizes all women into having malignant, overcritical intentions, leading him to develop
Trethewey immediately uses imagery to set the scene inviting your senses to help illustrate the image she has already relayed. This helped depict a more in-depth image of her poem “elegy”. After reading this poem several times, to build understanding, and break down literary elements; I came to the conclusion that Trethewey emphasizes the struggle to find balance. The balance between metaphor and symbolism, increasing throughout the entire poem showing battle between connotation and detonation. The struggle in which she used to connotation to portray the bigger picture, but also balanced out by denotation to show the subliminal messages of the relationship shared between the narrator’s father and herself.
The love song is actually a poem, but one of the meanings of love song, is a poem. This poem is assumed to be directed towards a lover of Prufrock’s, but throughout the story Prufrock seems to be facing dilemmas and indecision when having to choose the things to do and say to his lover. Elliot starts his love song off in a very mysterious manner, beckoning for his lover to join him and take a trip, but not the ordinary romantic
Also, Prufrock states, “Do I dare/ Disturb the universe?” (45-6) and “So how should I presume?” (54) to verbalize his hesitance and dryness in his love reaction. Prufrock continuously expresses his inner conflict and refrains from taking action; such passiveness contrasts with the poem’s title being “The Love Song”. Both pieces are triggered by love, more specifically unrequited love, yet the general tone has an ironic detachment to some degree.
Romance comes in all different forms and sizes, and Calbert understands that along with these she apprends why people fall in and out of love. Falling in love has a sense of vulnerability that requires taking risks that people are “willing to fail, / why we will still let ourselves fall in love,” in order to sustain real love. Calbert ends her poem with listing the romances with her husband and vows, “knowing nothing other than [their] love” because that is all that matters to her
In T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” the point of view of an indecisive, self-conscious young man is given. He is constantly questioning himself and has a fear of introducing himself to people and into relationships. The author illustrates the difficulties of overcoming self-doubt and insecurities by using personification in order to stretch the boundaries of reality and make the poem more understandable, using similes to create distinct images throughout the poem, and using symbols to connect the speaker’s thoughts together in one piece, all conveying the damage one’s mind can cause to their own personal image. Eliot begins by deploying personification in order to further the reader’s understanding of the poem and convey the speaker’s perspective of life around him. Specifically, the speaker uses personification whenever he personifies the yellow fog as a cat-like creature.
“The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and a richness to life that nothing else can bring,"(Oscar Wilde). Just thinking about love can brighten a person’s day. This is well portrayed in Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, and often uses allusions to highlight love and its effects. There are also many other allusions that do not involve love in a positive way, including Romeo’s unreturned love and Mercutio’s continuous mockery of love.
S. Eliot’s title “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock ironic is that the woman he speaks of never responds to him anywhere in the poem. This makes it to be the realization of Alfred Prufrock’s loveless life. The failure and breakdown of communication from the other side tell about one aspect, which is the symbol of isolation among humans. The beginning of the poem seems like the speaker is talking to a woman whom he loves. It then turns out to be ironic and against normal expectations of the readers because there is the anticipation of something special to be spoken from the other party as well.
Alfred Prufrock” is fragmented structure itself where he uses scattered, broken pieces that eliminate the traditional linear flow of a poem. This is mostly done through his exquisite imagery. Eliot writes, “I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas” (“Prufrock” 73-74). With this fragmented image, again, we learn more about Prufrock than we do about Eliot; it explains how Prufrock would be better off being a shelled creature, such as a crab, so he is protected by his outer-covering and doesn’t truly have to interact with anyone in the real world. Eliot also uses imagery to indicate the indecisive personality of the speaker.
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.
This self-denial gives him further resolve at the end of the poem to still refuse to propose. Eliot’s allusion to Shakespeare’s Hamlet is clever in this way because in the play Hamlet is also indecisive; so much so that he needs a reminder from his father’s ghost to kill his uncle, Claudius, who killed his father, took the throne, and married his mother (Shmoop). In this same portion of the poem as the Hamlet allusion, Prufrock admits that he thinks he’s too old to marry, that he is so old fashioned he still “wear[s] the bottoms of [his] trousers rolled” (Greenblatt 1304, line 121). This shows the reader that Prufrock still is adamant that he is not going to propose to the
Alfred Prufrock is an older man who is painfully aware of his aging. Although initially when looking at the poem, you would imagine a nice, rhythmic, and upbeat love song, simply by seeing the name Prufrock this trend is bucked. This is because the name Prufrock does not roll of the tong and sound very poetic. Indeed, Prufrock is a very usual name that is fitting for a seemingly unusual man. Right from the beginning of the poem it also becomes clear that the “love song” is a cruel irony.
Love. The sole word generates depictions of passionate acts, entwined lovers, romantic glimpses, murmured expressions of compliment, and an all-embracing sentiment that exceeds the corporeal. In Robert Browning’s “Porphyria’s Lover’ and E.E Cummings “somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond” love is theorized as a play of power where lovers assume active and passive roles based on their dominance within the relationship. By juxtaposing Browning’s passive male speaker who cannot accept the strong agency that his lover occupies and must see to switch their positions through murder alongside Cummings’ passive male speaker’s marvel over a mystifying power that his beloved has over him, the poems challenge the stereotypical ideals of passive femininity and active masculinity.
Prufrock invites readers to visit his involuntarily boring life and take a look at how the people around him live. In this