Preview

Love Song of J. Edgar

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1436 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Love Song of J. Edgar
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
1. I would describe Prufrock’s fantasy as a morbid fantasy he has come up with, that creates a long metaphor which correlates to Dante’s Divine Comedy. Through his mesmerizing use of dramatic monologue, he compares his version of hell as a lonely and abandoned dream, possible consciousness; that leads me to conclude that Prufrock’s problem ranges from a state of depression and loneliness that he integrates into this strange, ironic love song.
2. The simile in lines 2-3, “Like a patient etherized upon a table”, contain the word etherize. Its meaning is to numb or anesthetize. This gives the reader the impression that this poem is taking place in his conscious while being asleep. Also by using this simile in the third line of the poem, one can propose to say that Prufrock is simply fantasizing, the setting of his dilemma being his tumultuous lonely love life of a mind. Proof of his paralysis can also be seen in the final line of the poem where he writes “Till human voices wake us, and we drown.” This final line gives the idea that throughout the adventure he was dreaming.
3. In lines 1-12, the speaker is inviting someone to join him and simply drift away from reality and enter their unconscious mind where anything is possible. The images he minces into the poem can imply that he and his partner should escape from the chains of reality, and be free in their unlimited imagination, or in this case a bleak smoke infested city.
4. The name Michelangelo presents an image of a formal social gathering where the women he mentions talk about Michelangelo’s great works of art. This topic of talking about Michelangelo differentiates from talking about someone like Joe DiMaggio because Michelangelo was one of the greatest Renaissance artists and human beings to ever walk this earth. So it would be absurd if women call one another to gather and talk about DiMaggio or detergents to say the least. As long as people are in their right state

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” the various literary elements used is diction, repetition and allusion. It shows the poem main message stating that social rejection and a lack of ambusion has an outcome of a paranoid mental state.…

    • 139 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Common Magic

    • 565 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Figurative imagery was also used throughout the poem. The author uses them to express what the person is feeling or thinking. When he says, “her brain turns to water,” he is stating that she is not thinking about the real world because she is too busy concentrating on love. “The waitress floats towards you,” this explains how the speaker is in a crowded restaurant therefore the place is busy and the odds of her coming to take his order is very low, which makes her extraordinary and it seems like she is a angel floating. “His voice is a small boy turning somersaults in the green country of his blood,” which states that the old mans’ singing is calming and transports you to a joyful place, which helps forget the fact that it is just an old man on the bus.…

    • 565 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Stanza 2, the man washes himself up at a tap where he steps into mud, as there is always mud at taps. ‘Vandals Lavatory’, Grey uses the word ‘Vandal’ as he does not appreciate people vandalizing the streets to ruin the beauty of the Australian Coast Lines. The persona flushes the toilet and gets a chill whilst flushing, it’s the use of an actual toilet that gives him this chill as hitchhikers if not able to find a nearby toilet will often go in a bush. In Stanza 3, the man eats a floury apple, which he supposedly found in a supermarket bin where you find ruined goods. Grey uses personification ‘At this kerb sand crawls by’ to demonstrate that it was almost like the path was covered in sand moving slowly from the light wind about. ‘Car after car now-its like a boxer warming up with the heavy bag, spitting air’ the cars on the street are busy going somewhere. The use of simile is comparing the cars to a boxing match, how dangerous and violent of each car passing is like a punch by a boxer.…

    • 485 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    What is the mood and setting established by the speaker in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”?…

    • 795 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The author employs imagery throughout the poem by pairing vivid colors with other characters and figures to contribute to a more complex meaning. This visual imagery is found in line 3 when the speaker described…

    • 961 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Prufrock, throughout lines 26-30, not only delineates his insecurity but also his indecisiveness and fear of rejection. These few lines give readers a snapshot of what the poem consists of: Prufrock’s constant self-doubt, ambivalence and passivity. Furthermore, it reveals that he overanalyzes situations to the point where it is unhealthy. As a result of his negativity and lack of initiative, Prufrock sends the message that he is an unhappy and lonely man who yearns for love but cannot even bring himself to open up to a woman, let alone ask her this “overwhelming question”.…

    • 952 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Alfred Prufrock,” Eliot represents age and time through parallelism and situational irony to show that one must not squander his opportunities in life. Parallelism is prevalent throughout the poem and is used to present age in a nagging, incessant way. The phrase “there will be time” is paralleled throughout the piece, including in the stanza “There will be time, there will be time / [...] There will be time to murder and create, / [...] And time yet for a hundred indecisions” (“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” 26, 28, 32). Prufrock, the protagonist of the poem, repeatedly reminds himself of how much time he has; he uses the concept of time to console himself due to his embarrassment of being too afraid to act on his desires. As the poem goes on to explain, Prufrock does not actually have an endless amount of time, and he begins to age and die. He is “unable to act [... and] he consoles himself with the repeated speculation that ‘there will be time’ to act on his social [...] anxiety” (Persoon and Watson 4). Eliot himself connects with the character of Prufrock because he was known to be extremely introverted and shy; he over-analyzed things until his chance had long passed, much like Prufrock (Bush 1). Another tool that Eliot uses to display the ubiquity of death is situational irony. In the stanza “Let us go then, you and I, / When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherised upon a table,” situational irony is used between lines 2 and 3 to show how death disturbingly appears into Prufrock’s thoughts (“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” 1-3). The reader is not expecting to read such a morbid phrase; “the opening line [...] invites [the reader] to imagine strolling ‘When the evening is spread out against the sky,’ but [the] expectation of romantic reverie is quickly undercut by the macabre image of ‘a patient etherised upon a table’” (Bloom, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” 3). Prufrock is haunted and…

    • 2609 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The poem begins by introducing a city with ten million people in it. “Say this city has ten million souls” (1). Some are lucky enough to have the luxury of living in the mansion, this is directly contrasted with the rest who are living in abhorrent condition, holes. However, there is not even a “hole” for these people. “Some are living in mansion, some are living in holes / yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us” (1-3). Having no shelter, in this case bring up the idea of alienated. This indicates the very start of showing their non-existence by saying they do not belong to anywhere. Similarly, the speaker didn’t have a passport and so he is consider as dead which also is another way of saying he doesn’t exist. “The consul banged the table and said, / "If you 've got no passport you 're officially dead" (10-11). He cried “But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.” (12), showing the frustration towards the situation that he’s facing. The author uses “dead” in contrast to “alive” to illustrate the confrontation between what the speakers think of them self as “alive” and what the Nazis think of them as “dead”. In the Nazi’s mind, the German Jews do not live. Furthermore, in stanza seven, the author uses the imagery of thunder rumbling in as a jet fighter running across the sky. “Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky” (23). This raises the idea of…

    • 920 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The poet uses a morbid tone and grim diction along with cold imagery to attest the austerity of a man losing his livelihood. He uses words such as black, cold, and dead to describe a dark time in a person's life. Throughout the poem the poet has a morbid tone as he shows the darkness associated with this person's troubles. Imagery is used in this poem to display a person's death and insignificance of his life to the world around him. Lines 21-24 are a perfect example of the poet's use, "Black water, smooth above the weir/ Like starry velvet in the night,/ Though ruffled once, would soon appear/ The same as ever to the sight," which means that when the lady jumped into the dark water, it would soon consume her and no one would know of her whereabouts, or even notice her dead.…

    • 394 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In the very first line of the first stanza, the poem speaker says, "Home 's the place we head for in our sleep" (1). This one sentence sets up the reader with an explanation that the poem is going to take…

    • 1516 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Eliot, T.S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The Norton Introduction to Literature: Shorter Tenth Edition. Eds. Allison Booth and Kelly J. Mays. New York: Norton, 2010. 1015-1019. Print.…

    • 1022 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Prufrock is in-love with a woman or being in-love about his experiences in life. In the first stanza, “Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky”, Prufrock, wants us to believe that he is with a woman but the third line, Prufrock he talks someone that is sick. In addition, the stanza that I like is in line 26 - 29, “There will be time, there will be time…” this is the time for Prufrock to think and start meeting new people or new woman. He works hard for himself and but he doesn’t have family to leave all his things…

    • 110 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Elliot, Prufrock is a man that is pessimistic, has low self-esteem, and has much internal conflict. He believes that he isn't good enough for the women of his desire; this theme also becomes a motif.…

    • 825 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    PPol

    • 612 Words
    • 3 Pages

    2. What are three images the poet uses in lines 1-57 to convey his sense of isolation?…

    • 612 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    TS Eliot's 'The Love Song'

    • 1039 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Journeys lead to greater understanding. They can be physical, inner or imaginative and can allow one to gain self-awareness, discover their flaws and weaknesses as well as gain spiritual enlightenment. That journeys can lead to greater understanding can be seen in TS Eliot’s poem The Love Song, Philip Otto Rouge artwork Dawn, Harwood’s poem In the Park and Victor Kellesher’s book cover Ivory trail.…

    • 1039 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics