Prufrock Answers Essays

Prufrock Answers Essays Prufrock Answers Essay Prufrock Answers Essay † indicating that he is worried that all of life’s mysteries (the fog, murder, creation) will be over once he has made it to his destination. There will be â€Å"time yet for a hundred indecisions† he tells himself, afraid that he is going to lose the luxury of infinite possibility. He knows, though, that time will narrow his possibilities down one by one, systematically making each possibility real or not real: having already seen the eternal Footman, Death, he is familiar that there will not be time for everything. Although Prufrock is not sure that he wants to commit to comfort, a world of â€Å"sunsets and teacups and sprinkled streets,† he knows that the time he has for indecision is not limitless, and he fears that waiting too long will leave him a lonely old man, sitting in the window, smoking. Doubt and Ambiguity Near the end of the poem Prufrock declares, â€Å"I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was I meant to be. † To many, the defining characteristic of Shakespeare’s Hamlet is his inability to conquer or accept his doubts and settle upon one course of action to follow. Having seen Prufrock’s thought process twist throughout stanza after stanza, and having seen him fret over whether the life he is committing to is the one he really wants, or if he has chosen unwisely because of social pressure, or if his body is so worn out that he has no choice left at all, the reader could rightly disagree with him and say â€Å"Yes,† he is too Hamlet. The indecisiveness of Hamlet is clearly there: what he seems to be denying is the â€Å"Prince† part of the identity, as if the title of royalty is too glamorous for a humble fool like himself. Ironically, it is this self-consciousness, this constant reminder that he is a lowly being, that conflicts with his rebellious nature and causes Prufrock the most indecisiveness. Near the middle of the poem his constant questioning of himself takes on a brief pattern: â€Å"how should I presume? † he asks, and after another stanza he asks again, followed at the end of the following stanza with â€Å"should I presume? In this sequence we see that his self-questioning, his long one-man dialogue that is meant to think things through and settle some issues, is actually working backward, taking him further from decision. In this poem the speaker’s doubts do not reach an answer, they just multiply, so when he finally decides to take action it is not with comfort or certainty bu t with regret; he sees his move from contemplation to action as a drowning. Style â€Å"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock† begins with an epigraph, a quote that sets the tone for the poem to follow. This epigraph, included in the poem in the original Italian, is from Dante’s Divine Comedy. Its use here emphasizes Eliot’s belief in the instructive function of poetry, as well as his conviction that it was a poet’s responsibility to be aware of and build on the established tradition of poetry. This poem (exclusive of the epigraph) is structured into four sections, with each section separated by an ellipsis, a mark used in conventional punctuation to indicate an omission, but used here to signal either time passing between thoughts relevant to the subject under consideration, or information considered too obvious to be included. Eliot’s belief that â€Å"No verse is free for the serious poet† is apparent in â€Å"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. † This poem is written in free verse with varying line lengths, but Eliot employs rhyme as a major structural component in its composition. In fact, in the 131 lines of the main poem structure, only 12 lines are unrhymed. Note the pattern of the rhyme in the first stanza, beginning â€Å"Let us go then, you and I. †: a couplet - an unrhymed line - a series of three couplets - an unrhymed line - a couplet. Such a pattern serves to establish coherence in the stanza, as well as to create a distinctive music. Eliot also found repetition useful to establish rhythms of ideas as well as sound rhythms. Note the repetition of the word â€Å"time† in the two stanzas beginning â€Å"And indeed there will be time. † in the first section. Conventional punctuation and sentence structure are used in this poem, but capital letters at the beginnings of lines stress lineation, thus balancing the importance of the sentence with the importance of the line. While Eliot maintained that poetry should conform to current conversational speech, he emphasized the musical qualities of speech, as well as the imagistic and symbolic possibilities of words, by his use of lineation. The varying line lengths and stanza lengths of this poem are indicative of Eliot’s refusal to impose a form on the thoughts and emotions at the center of the composition. It was not his purpose to discover or create a new form for poetry, but to free the poet from set forms in order to allow each poem to create its own form - in this case a â€Å"love song† which Eliot sings onto the page for the reader. Historical Context In a review of Catholic Anthology 1914-15, edited by the poet Ezra Pound and containing â€Å"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,† critic Arthur Waugh noted that if â€Å"the unmetrical, incoherent banalities of these literary ‘Cubists’ were to triumph, the State of Poetry would be threatened with anarchy. † His remarks are clearly intended to frighten lovers of poetry and to dismiss the authors as bungling amateurs. Little could Waugh have guessed that he was identifying the very effects that the poets intended, and that his criticism is only of interest to us today because it signifies that, by the time he was writing, the Modern Age had arrived. Modernism is a blanket term that we use for a great number of artistic and philosophical movements (including Cubism in painting) that were intent on throwing away the old standards and replacing them with work that is closer to the way the people really live and think. This struggle between life and theory has always gone on and continues to this day. In music, for example, rap has been embraced by its listeners as an authentic expression of how people feel, but it is scoffed at by music connoisseurs for its lack of melodic complexity - â€Å"incoherent banalities,† as Waugh would say. After years of being underground and rejected, rap has now reached a level of acceptance that makes it a prime target to be dismantled by the next new upstarts. Similarly, the rise of Modernism was a reaction to Victorianism, which was a reaction to Romanticism, and on throughout history. Since the chain is unbroken, there is no clear place to start tracing Modernism’s roots, but one good place might be in 1798, with the publication of William Wordsworth’s and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads. In response to the formal, strict poetry that had come before him, Wordsworth wrote that poetry should drawn from â€Å"a selection of language really used by man. † Poetry, he felt, was too far out of touch with reality, and he encouraged writers to change the way they thought about their job. Out of this grew the Romantic movement, which included such great early-nineteenth century writers as Keats, Shelley, Byron, Tennyson, Emerson, Melville, Poe, and Dickinson. Romanticism was a spirit of intellectual freedom that affected all areas of society. The individual, especially the artistic individual, was held to be of the highest importance to Romanticism: creativity was worshipped. The last half of the nineteenth century saw the triumph of industry and capitalism, and is considered a less humanistic time. Novels concerned themselves with social structure, and poetry became more formal, more stylized, emphasizing how things were said over what was said. The Industrial Revolution brought trains and eventually automobiles, stepping up the pace of life: reading became less and less relevant, a luxury to be enjoyed by those who were socially comfortable. Throughout the period, though, there were scattered elements that would eventually make it impossible for the forces of social order to hold: Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto in 1848; Darwin published Origins of the Species in 1859; Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams came out in 1900. Each of these created a revolution in its own intellectual area and lead to the Modernist suspicion of all previously accepted beliefs. There is no particular philosophy of Modernism, but instead we measure its growth by looking at various revolutionary movements in the arts. In 1909, for instance, the Futurist movement in Italy released its â€Å"Foundation Manifesto of Futurism† (bold artistic movements often announce themselves with manifestoes), praising â€Å"aggressive action, the mutual leap, the punch and slap. † At the same time, Pound fell in with a group of poets in London and discussed principles that eventually became known as Imagism, known for its rejection of poetic conventions. Pound was also instrumental in founding Vorticism, which was based on change and motion and was supposed, Pound said, to â€Å"sweep out the past century as surely as Attila swept across Europe. These three examples of literary movements at the time give us a sense of the new values that came with Modernism: embracing instead of avoiding the industrial world; an emphasis on powerful, not pretty, poetry; a willingness to use any tools and break any rules in order to capture what the world was really like; in general, a devotion to a higher social caus e (think of all of those manifestoes) and an unwillingness to simply create art for its own sake. Criticism Marisa Pagnattaro Marisa Pagnattaro is a freelance writer and is the Book Review Editor and an Editorial Board Member of the Georgia Bar Journal. She is a teaching assistant at the University of Georgia, Athens. In the following essay, Pagnattaro provides a close reading of â€Å"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,† emphasizing its comic elements. It is a mistake to approach T. S. Eliot’s â€Å"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock† with the same seriousness as for The Waste Land. To enjoy this poem and get the most out of the verse, readers should have a wry sense of humor. Prufrock is an anxiety-filled, insecure, middle-aged bachelor who fears that his expressions of love will be rebuffed. First published in Poetry in 1915, and then collected in Prufrock and Other Observations in 1917, Eliot used the traditional form of the dramatic monologue for the speaker, Prufrock, to express his romantic dilemma. The dramatic monologue is generally associated with nineteenth-century poets such as Robert Browning and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and is characterized by the voice of a single speaker who reveals something personal to the reader. The memorable title of this poem may have been derived from an advertisement in Eliot’s hometown. In The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot, Hugh Kenner revealed that the â€Å"name of Prufrock-Littau, furniture wholesalers, appeared in advertisements in St. Louis, Missouri† at the beginning of this century. Although Eliot claimed that any approbation of the â€Å"now-famous German surname must have been ‘quite unconscious,’† Kenner suggested that this is an early example of the â€Å"rich mischief of Eliot’s mind. By adding â€Å"J. Alfred† to the name, Eliot combines a sense of mysterious dignity to the ridiculousness of â€Å"Prufrock. † Compound this with the title’s claim that the work is a love song, and readers are on their way to appreciate the dry humor underlying this very famous work. The poem opens with an epigram from Dante’s Inferno in which Guido de Montefeltro, who is consumed in flames as punishment for giving false counsel, confesses his shame because he believes that it cannot be reported back on earth. In context, this excerpt is essentially Prufrock’s assurance that he can confide in his reader without fear of shame for what he is about to disclose. And so the poem opens: â€Å"Let us go then, you and I,† which is to say, â€Å"come along and hear my story because I can trust you. The speaker then entreats his reader to join him on an evening stroll, presumably through Boston (where there are â€Å"sawdust restaurants with oyster shells†), but not to ask â€Å"What is it? † just yet. Instead of just laying bare his quandary, the â€Å"overwhelming question,† Prufrock says, â€Å"Let us go and make our visit†; he takes his reader along on a social call to reveal his inadequacies. As the poem progresses, ho wever, it becomes apparent that the â€Å"you-and-I† format begins to collapse and Prufrock is merely talking to himself. Prufrock first travels through the grunge of the city, filled with ellow fog and smoke (not unlike the industrial waste of Eliot’s native St. Louis). Eliot imbues the scene with catlike characteristics, giving the evening a somewhat seductive feline tone: â€Å"The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes†; â€Å"Licked its tongue†; â€Å"Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap† â€Å"Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. † Prufrock next enters into a world of butlers and tea. Here, in an arena of vacuous social chatter, â€Å"the women come and go / talking of Michelangelo. † This is the world of writer Henry James, in which proper etiquette and social grace must prevail. By opening the fourth stanza with â€Å"And indeed there will be time,† Eliot echoes the memorable line â€Å"Had we but world enough and time,† from Andrew Marvell’s seduction poem, â€Å"To His Coy Mistress. † Ironically, Prufrock does not feel compelled to seize the day. There is plenty of time for indecision as Prufrock pictures his mind racing through â€Å"a hundred visions and revisions† in the short span of time between the serving and â€Å"the taking of a toast and tea. † Prufrock repeats his conviction that â€Å"indeed there will be time† to wonder â€Å"‘Do I dare? and ‘Do I dare? † - that is, first, does he dare to make a declaration of love, and, if not, does he then dare to flee down the stairs after he rang the doorbell, knowing that the subject of his affections may spot the â€Å"bald spot in the middle† of his hair. Prufrock makes a desperate attempt to attire himself accordingly and not t o overdo it with his â€Å"necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin. † Yet, in his mind, Prufrock envisions his contemporaries commenting on his deteriorating appearance, imagining the remarks, â€Å"How his hair is growing thin! and â€Å"But how his arms and legs are thin! † Balding and scrawny, the self-deprecating Prufrock again wonders, â€Å"Do I dare / disturb the universe? † In other words, does he dare to shake up the stasis of his social universe by expressing his love? Prufrock falls into a state of melancholy by lamenting that his life may actually be nearly over: â€Å"For I have known them all already, known them all - / Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, / I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. Far from living a life of adventure, Prufrock has played it safe, passing his days sipping coffee. He then attempts to lay himself bare: â€Å"And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, / When I am pinned and wriggli ng on the wall. † Picturing himself like an insect mounted in an entomologist’s collection, Prufrock wonders where he would begin his story, to tell about â€Å"all the buttends† of his â€Å"days and ways. † After posing the rhetorical question â€Å"And how shall I begin? † Prufrock digresses in the five lines that are bracketed off from the rest of the poem by a series of dots. He reveals his walks in the working-class part of the city, where â€Å"lonely men in shirt-sleeves† are â€Å"leaning out of windows. † Prufrock seems to fear becoming like those forlorn men, isolated from love and left to spend their evenings â€Å"watching the smoke that rises from the pipes. † The dejected Prufrock then declares â€Å"I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas† as if to say that he would be better off as a carefree crustacean instead of the lovelorn man he has become. When he returns to his monologue, Prufrock flirts with the notion of himself as a heroic character, but dismisses each comparison. First he invokes the image of the prophet John the Baptist who was murdered and his head brought in on a platter to Princess Salome who had requested his death. Prufrock laments that he has seen his â€Å"head grown slightly bald] brought in on a platter,† but acknowledges â€Å"I am no prophet. † He has been slain at the behest of a woman, yet lacks the heroic quality of John the Baptist. In fact, he has seen the â€Å"moment of [his] greatness flicker† when â€Å"the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker†; the hopelessly intimidated Prufrock has been snubbed by arrogant servants at the homes of genteel society where he visits. Next, once again drawing on imagery from Marvell’s poem (â€Å"To have bitten off the matter with a smile, / To have squeezed the universe into a ball†), Prufrock envisions himself as Lazarus, who rose from the dead. He imagines himself returning to the social scene saying, â€Å"‘I am Lazarus, come from the dead, / Come back to tell you all’† (presumably to tell them about his romantic affections for one in particular, perhaps even of a marriage proposal). Instead of being met with great enthusiasm, Prufrock pictures the woman he adores as â€Å"settling a pillow by her head† coolly saying, â€Å"That is not what I meant at all. / That is not it, at all. † In this scenario, she flatly rejects him, suggesting that he has misunderstood her social politeness for romantic interest. Prufrock again repeats her curt and cruel response in the next stanza to further underscore his horror at receiving such a social death sentence that leaves him looking foolish before his acquaintances. Lastly, he acknowledges that he is â€Å"not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be. † Like Hamlet, Prufrock wrestles with a paradigm of indecision (â€Å"To be or not to be. †), but Prufrock lacks the ability to act. â€Å"Deferential, glad to be of use, / Politic, cautious, and meticulous,† Prufrock is much more a Polonious than a Hamlet. Aging and silly, Prufrock is left only able to dream of romance. Several of the most memorable lines in the poem follow this anti-heroic sequence. Prufrock muses: â€Å"I grow old I grow old /I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. / Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? /I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. † With this he creates yet another ridiculous image of himself with his hair slicked to cover his bald spot, trousers cuffed in youthful fashion, considering the act of high daring of eating a peach in easily stained white slacks. The â€Å"Do I dare? of romance is reduced to an act of ingesting a notoriously juicy piece of fruit. Prufrock is defeated in love by his own inaction. As the poem draws to a close, Prufrock admits, â€Å"I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each //I do not think that they will sing to me. † These mythical sea creatures believed to coax sailors out to sea with their seductive songs sing to each other in Prufrock’s world; they will not enc hant him into action. He sees the mermaids at a distance â€Å"riding seaward on the waves / Combing the white hair of the waves blown back. Prufrock will never enter their world or the realm of love and romance in his own world. In the last stanza of the poem, Prufrock lingers on the dream-like periphery of the sea of desire by â€Å"sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown / Till human voices wake us, and we drown. † Even though Prufrock uses the pronoun â€Å"we† - as if he is referring to the reader who apparently accompanied him at the beginning of his narrative - he seems to have slipped into a dream-like state, waiting for the human voices of reality to alert him to the pitiful fact that he will be unable to sustain himself with his dreams. When â€Å"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock† was first published, it was met with a wide range of criticism. In a 1916 assessment in Quarterly Review, English critic Arthur Waugh dismissed the poem as mere â€Å"cleverness. † The author of an unsigned article in Literary Review denounced Prufrock as â€Å"neither witty nor amusing† and suggested that â€Å"Mr. Eliot could do finer work on traditional lines. In sharp contrast, American poet Ezra Pound praised Eliot’s work and defended him against his critics’ attacks. Since those initial reviews, Prufrock has baffled many critics who have sought to uncover some deep, dark meaning of â€Å"Prufrock. † Biographer Peter Ackroyd reported that Eliot’s own commentary was essentially limited to his remark, â€Å"I’m afraid that J. Alfred Prufrock didn’t have much of a love life. † This simple explanation should be taken seriously and the poem should be enjoyed.