Love Song Of J Alfred Prufrock Essay

1.
Throughout the course, we have studied various victorian authors and looked at how different paintings have interpreted respective poems. I have chosen the modern work, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to describe a scene that I would paint from this work. Characteristic to the modern period, T.S. Elliot focused on the inner conscious of a person in contrast to the focus on nature in the Romantic period. In this modern dramatic monologue, the speaker, Prufrock tells the audience in detail about himself, describing himself to be an average man in the 20th Century to another unspecified character addressed as “you”. To illustrate this description and the underlying theme of fragmented self, I will paint the scene of Prufrock speaking of Mermaids to emphasize his yearning for something else as he experiences a feeling of being trapped in time and specifically with his life.

“And flamed upon the brazen greaves of bold sir lancelot”. Upon the entrance of Lancelot, the lady of Shallot is so captivated by him that she is prompted to break the curse “to look down on Camelot”. In turn, “the mirror cracked from side to side”, activating her curse and ultimately, dying on her way down the river to meet Lancelot. The lady’s former existence was a form of accepting personal insignificance by not showing herself or living life like the rest of society. As a result, Tennyson produces guidance in personal significance in society by illustrating the Lady’s will to even die by breaking the curse to reach Lancelot, signifying notoriety within society despite her own well-being. To emphasize the miserable existence of the Lady without personal significance, Tennyson employs the technique of repetition as seen in the quote, "Four gray walls, and four gray towers”, illustrating this poor existence and guiding readers to pursue