Charles Cooley Poetry Analysis

Society is very different in the world today compared to the early 20th century. The one thing that stayed over the years was imaging how to make good impressions and how others think. Charles Cooley discovered the looking glass theory following three particular phases for this process. Based on social interactions, or actions of others, individuals grow and create an image of their sense of self. The first phase in Cooley’s theory is imaging or evaluating one’s self image from another person’s perspective. Next, taking that evaluation to imagine what others judge based off of that image. Lastly, taking in all the judgments to receive a certain feeling or reaction to that image.
In the poem by T.S. Eliot titled, “The Love Song of J. Alfred
This simile suggests that he is worried about people judging him and the worst possible outcomes others will think of him. In the poem, he begins with saying, “When the evening is spread out against the sky/Like a patient etherised upon a table” (I. 2-3). Since hospitals are sometimes a place where loved ones die, this visual imagery can be interpreted as him thinking about death on a regular basis. The literary elements used is visual imagery and it is a simile since the sky is lightly compared to the patient table. In the same way, he is always worried throughout the poem that others will judge him in the wrong way. As he is around people, he mentions how others stare at him which makes him very uncomfortable by saying, “The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase/And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin/When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall” (VIII. 56-58). In these lines he is using a metaphor to compare himself to an insect that others are analyzing under a microscope, moreover, completely rejecting phase one of Cooley’s theory in the process. Also, as seen throughout the poem, he is very afraid of women misunderstanding him which is why he doesn’t know if he should even bother to ask his question. In the lines, “So how should I presume?” (VII. 54) and “Should say: ‘That is not what I meant at all/That is not it, at all’” (XIII. 97-98) he is definitely worried about how he should act around women. At length, he is worrying about his question he wants to ask this woman, but afraid of rejection or that she will misunderstand him. This reflects his isolation and how he imagines others judgments on his sense of self. Another example of the second phase in the looking glass process is when he describes himself as he thinks others would describe him claiming that, “With a bald spot in the middle of my hair/[They will say: ‘How his hair is growing