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Poetry One of the most influential and celebrated writers of the twentieth century was T. S. Eliot. In his writings he was able to successfully capture the feelings of his time.
His contributions to the genre of poetry have had a profound effect on modern literature. While Eliot is most well known for his poetry, he was also an accomplished playwright and author of several books of social criticism (Unger, p. 118). In Eliot's poems and plays, he was able to capture the feelings of the intellectuals of his time. One of his major themes was that one can not have a fulfilling life unless they take their life seriously.
Eliot would often portray older people in his works as having missed the opportunity to do things they no longer are able to do. The idea of religious humility and serenity was also a major theme in his earlier work. Other themes include the failure of communication between a man and a woman and the isolation of an individual from the outside world (Unger, p. 122). To convey these themes, Eliot utilized a great deal of symbolism in his poetry and plays. Thomas Eliot wrote a wide variety of works including poetry, plays, and books. His first book of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations, was published in 1917, and immediately gained him notoriety among the British literary circle.
With the publication of The Waste Land in 1922, Thomas's popularity grew even more. His major later poems include Ash Wednesday (1930) and Four Quartets (1943); his books of literary and social criticism include The Sacred Wood (1920), The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933), After Strange Gods (1934), and Notes towards the Definition of Culture (1940). Eliot was also an important playwright, of whose dramas include Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party (Unger, p. 129). Eliot's masterpiece, The Wasteland, "is a grand consummation of the themes, techniques and styles that Eliot had been developing." (Unger, p. 131) The success of The Wasteland surprised Eliot because originally the poem had been merely a bundle of personal gripes that he scribbled down during a retreat to France. However, thanks to the help of his friend Ezra Pound, Eliot was able to transform it into a literary masterpiece. In its final form, The Wasteland became a work of social criticism in which Eliot used a wasteland as an extended metaphor for the cultural decline he believed to be rampant in the early nineteen hundreds.
It was a type of poetry the world had never seen before and serves as the standard to which all other modern poetry is compared. When someone begins reading The Wasteland, they are immediately struck by the complex nature of the poem. The interjection of lines written in German and the sudden changes in the basic style and structure of the poem serve to confuse the reader. The average reader would also have difficulty grasping the ornate symbolism, of which The Wasteland was woven.
The poem is littered with allusions to a countless number of literary works ranging form the Bible to Dante's Inferno. Only the best read person reads this work and walks away with a basic understanding of all of the themes expressed in this poem (Unger, p. 137). T. S.
Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock depicts the thoughts of a modern, urban man who is trying to express his feelings to a woman, but feels trapped due to his fear of being disgrace in society. Two methods that Eliot uses to convey this theme are through his use of repetition and his sporadic rhyming style. Contrary to what the title implies, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is anything but a love song. It is instead quite the opposite.
Prufrock is an older gentleman who views his everyday life as being vacant, black, and repetitive. Early on in the poem, Prufrock describes an evening with phrases that insinuate melancholy and depression. In line six, Prufrock describes the night as restless and says that the streets are tedious arguments of insidious intent. (Eliot, p. 45) From this the reader can infer a certain discontentment that Prufrock has with his surroundings. As the poem continues, Prufrock describes his desire to court a lady whom is within his social group.
He even starts to conjure up ideas about what he will say to her when he finally confesses his true feelings. Prufrock stops this almost immediately, because he feels that he is plain and ordinary. He is also afraid of rejection, and what the other members of his social group will think. After Prufrock is unable to gain the courage to speak out, he begins to dwell on whether or not it would have been worth it. Prufrock starts to criticize himself because he is conforming to the society that he is so unhappy with. In the end, Prufrock decides that to live life, people must try to make their dreams come true.
If they believe the voice of reason and give up, this is the only way they can truly fail. Repetition plays a crucial role in conveying the theme of insignificance. T. S. Eliot uses repetition a great number of times. He not only uses repetition within the actual stanzas, but he also uses them between other stanzas.
Do I dare Do I dare disturb the universe? (Eliot, p. 47) To Prufrock, the society is his universe, and despite his discontentedness he is still afraid of rejection. Time is repeated several times, and gives the reader a feeling of hesitation or delay, perhaps procrastination. Prufrock is fearful of making a move. He reasons with himself that there is always time, but the longer he waits the more anxious he becomes. In the end, he says, I am old I am old. (Eliot, p. 47) Prufrock now feels that perhaps he has waited too long, and has run out of time.
He feels that he no longer has anything to offer. T. S. Eliot's unique rhyming style is an important asset in portraying the idea of restlessness.
In every stanza, Eliot has a different rhyming style, which gives the impression of jumping around. This gives the reader a feeling of being in Prufrock's mind. In the beginning Prufrock is a little restless, but he becomes more coherent as the poem continues. Near the end, Prufrock begins to skip around slightly once again. (Waggoner, p. 433) These two epic poems by Eliot are comparable and similar when their styles, contents and themes are scrutinized.
Additionally, each of these poems exemplifies the quirky mastery of Eliot's contributions to the literary world. Although each poem focuses around timeless themes and subjects, the texts are both saturated in a conspicuous mix of odd-ness and new-ness which is what ultimately links them together as modern masterpieces. Style is undoubtedly one of the most obvious and apparent characteristics of the two poems. Serving as perfect illustrations of Eliot's innate and curious writing style, both The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Wasteland are written with just enough confusion and randomness as to overload the reader with questions, overwhelm them with in cognizance and entice them to continue reading.
However, the way in which Eliot's writing style reflects upon the central characters of each poem is quite different. In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, the basic nature of the title character is complimented and enhanced by the style that Eliot maintains throughout the poem. One example is Eliot's use of recurrent images, which are a part of the confusion and randomness of his writing style. Throughout The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock, Eliot returns, again and again, to the image of Prufrock's hair growing thin and gray. At first the repetition of the lines seems awkward and out of place. However, when the poem is examined as a whole, as one body of text, it becomes clear that this stylistic tendency of Eliot actually facilitates the illustration of Prufrock's circumstance. As Prufrock narrates the poem he disposes upon the reader a train of thought filled with deep introspection's; simultaneously the rapidity of the lines in the poem illustrate to the reader what lies deep inside the mind and soul of Prufrock. In the case of the lines which repeatedly, and somewhat monotonously, comment about his aging hair and appearance, they serve as evidence to the reader that Prufrock is overwhelmingly self-conscious. In the case of The Wasteland, similar stylistic tendencies of Eliot are apparent, and they again have an effect on the central character of the poem, in this case the narrator.
Similarly, in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Eliot's style of new-ness and random-ness is also quite powerful in The Wasteland. However, in this instance, Eliot's significant usage of style lies in the overwhelming amount of fragments which exist throughout the poem in the modes of scenes and voices. The poem is clearly divided into five sections, however within each section scenes are written in fragments as if having been haphazardly thrown together. (Waggoner, p. 435) Similarly, speeches given by the narrator of the poem and by a few other characters are often indecipherable from one another and it is confusing as to who is saying what to whom. Again, this style of Eliot's - using randomness and confusion - contributes something to the narrator of the poem and the persona which he presents. As the narrator delves deep into questions of memory and forgetting, and the conscious and unconscious, Eliot's style of using random fragments of scenes and voices contributes to the readers overall vision of the narrator.
Another important comparison can be drawn between the plots of the two poems. Although because of style the poems objectives and resignations seem unclear and rather ambiguous, it is possible to identify a plot in each as it pertains to The Narrator and Prufrock respectively. In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Prufrock is torn and struggles between his self-consciousness and timid-ness, and his yearning for satisfaction and fulfillment in lifes realms of sex, emotions, and knowledge of the future, the past, and the present. In its entirety, the poem portrays the introspection's of Prufrock as he ponders his existence and poses endless and seemingly unanswerable questions, such as Do I Dare? (Eliot, p. 47). Similarly, in The Wasteland, the narrator seems to take a pilgrimage of sorts in search of amends and satisfaction for his soul and inner being as well as his physical being.
The latter yearnings - of the physical being - are exemplified in his depiction of three different women and the crude bleakness of each of their sexual encounters. Overall, the story line of each poem entails an individuals dissatisfaction with one or more aspects of modern day society. As Prufrock measures out his life in coffee spoons, (Eliot, p. 46) and the narrator of The Wasteland finds himself lost mixing memory and desire (Eliot, p. 114), they are each searching and questioning; although they are each dissatisfied they do not despair and are able to maintain a sense of optimism and assurance. These two poems go hand in hand in the eye of the reader as poems of soul searching and journeying with a free form.
Words Count: 1, 878. Bibliography: Eliot, T. S. The Complete Poems and Plays. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World Incorporated, 1982. Unger, Leonard, ed. "T.
S. Eliot. " American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies. New York: Charles Scriber's Sons, 1974. Waggoner, Hyatt H. "Eliot as Poet. " The Sewanee Review 92. 3 (1984): 432 - 41.
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