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https://www.scribd.com/document/85919201/Eliot-Rhapsody-and-Preludes

● Edmund Wilson, being one of the critics who praised Eliot, called him ​"one of our only authentic poets"
●

The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock

Theme / Idea Technique Link to Context Link to other Poems

Self-Deprecation ● stream of consciousness lays bare ● Insecurity from Eliot’s reflection of the
the workings of Prufrock’s mind. increasing role of women in society,
Identity ● Extensive pronouns of ​‘my’​ and lack of communication and his
‘they’ personal concerns for the changes
○ Hyperbolising the problems happening in the world.
that he faces in his mind but ● The showing of only an artificial front
ultimately ends up and not being yourself again links
self-deprecating about back to insecurity and its subsequent
staying individual or to blend self-deprecation.
in with the rest of society.
● ‘Decisions’ ​and ​‘revisions’
○ constant loophole of
paradoxical, conflicting ideas
that also similarly resembles
Prufrock’s thought
process in the stanza.
● ‘​No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor
was meant to be’
○ declarative statement to an
intertextual reference of
Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’
 ○ Compares himself to Hamlet
and then dismisses his
importance.
○ He would be a minor
character, not the
protagonist
○ Irony​ - He does resemble
Hamlet. Similarly, Prufrock's
greatest flaw is his failure to
act. Spending the whole
poem analysing and
re-analysing every decision
without doing much.
● “To prepare a face to meet the
faces that you meet”
○ referencing the way women
must compose themselves
with not only make-up but
also fake personalities in
today’s society, the ways
people in society wish to be
seen as they want to be
seen.
● Describes himself as ​‘a pair of
ragged claws / Scuttling across the
floors of silent seas’ ​watching
‘lonely men in shirt sleeves, leaning
out of windows’
○ Creates an atmosphere of
division between Prufrock
and his world
● “I have measured out my life with
 coffee spoons”
○ Coffee spoons are useless,
ornate, too small and
insignificant
○ Metaphor​ for the smallness
and insignificance of life on
a worldly scale
● repeated phrasing of​ “I have
known”, “have known”
○ self-justification for
hating society, now being
the opposite of
self-deprecating in the
previous
stanza but still justifying his
inactivity in his poor,
miserable life.
● “So how should I presume?”
○ Doubtful rhetorical question
of why Prufrock should go
out and change the world.
○ Using ​‘how’ i​ nstead of ​‘why’
in that line proves that
Prufrock knows that he will
continue but not how he will
○ Emphasising his stubborn
mindset
● recurring rhetorical questions ​“Do I
dare?” “Do I dare?”​ and sudden
changes in punctuation - fluctuating
between enjambment and caesura
○ Show the
 paradoxes/juxtapositions of
Prufrock’s character
Damaged psyche of ● ‘Like a patient etherised upon a
humanity table’
○ Simile is used to explore the
theme of humanity being
Fragmentation of blinded by faux ideologies
Society and understandings.
● “half-deserted streets”,
Isolation / Alienation ○ likening his perception of
modernity to a mundane
wasteland.
● characterisation of the tentative
Prufrock further emphasises this,
presented through a melancholic
stream of consciousness that
conveys Eliot’s discontented
“engagement with reality... a
harmony for which he is striving.”
(d’Easum,1969)
● “When I am formulated, sprawling
on a pin, when I am pinned and
wriggling on the wall.”
○ The assonance and
repetition of ​‘pinned’
epitomise Prufrock’s feelings
of social entrapment – an
allusion to Eliot’s notion of
modern culture as rapid and
futile, leaving one riddled
● Obsession with reality and the battle ● The hollow men
against fake humanity ● Preludes
● lack of realisation of the cruelty of war
and the fragmented state of society at
the time
● People being etherized on a table is
symbolic of someone being unaware
of what is occurring around them. This
is idea is continually explored with the
theme of isolation and having a lack of
spiritual or physical connection.
(Damaged Psyche
● passing of Victorian ideals and the
trauma of World War I challenged
cultural notions of masculine identity,
causing artists to question the
romantic literary ideal of a
visionary-poet capable of changing
the world through verse.
 with indecision and
paralysis.
● view emanates from Eliot’s
philosophical interpretation of
modern industrialised society as the
fulcrum of superficiality and
materialism
● “My morning coat...my collar/My
necktie, rich and modest”.
○ act as a gauge of his status,
drawing attention to the
importance of his
external presentation rather
than this inner self – leaving
him feeling isolated and
agitated.
● Emotional state is heightened by his
‘overthinking’ tendencies as he
evaluates himself through society’s
eyes;

Time ● constantly flipping between the past
and the future, adding the
implication that the present isn’t
worth noting
● time is understood as a physical
concept that isn’t infinite
● “I grow old… I grow old. I shall wear
the bottom of my trousers rolled”
○ understands that he is
growing old and that the
● resonate with audiences following the ● Preludes
Industrial Revolution whereby many
people were working hard and
hustling until they grew old.
● ideals of time that Eliot becomes
obsessed within his poetry whereby
he is constantly doubting himself and
reflecting on time wasted rather than
the future.
 missed opportunities of life
have caught up on.
● “And the afternoon, the evening,
sleeps so peacefully!.../Asleep…
tired...or it malingers”
○ Prufrock shows his
resentfulness towards those
who are able to sleep due to
his own insomnia, again
resultant of a fast-moving
society.
● “In the room the women come and
go/Talking of Michelangelo”
○ serves the idea of a form of
twilight zone. Prufrock has
an inability to consciously
grasp time as it is repetitive
due to each action being
meaningless and ignorable
● “In a minute there is time/For
decisions and revisions which a
minute will reverse.”
○ time is a central worry for
Prufrock. He also reflects on
the idea that time gives him
an ability to change his
decisions.
● Feeling of Prufrock’s that there is
not a limitless amount of time left for
these times of indecision, and if he
doesn’t begin to make faster
 decisions he will end up a lonely old
man, sitting alone, waiting for death.
● The poem never settles long on a
single meter which allows him to
convey Prufrock’s flow of thought as
well as mirrors their perplexion of
time

Preludes
Theme / Idea Technique Link to Context Link to other Poems

Time ● “The winter evening settles down”,
○ opens Preludes, the
monotony of modern life is
suggested through ​“settles
down”​ implying also a
sense of stasis that cannot
be felt by the fast-moving
modern world.
● “Trampled by consisted feet / At
four and five and six o’clock,”
○ rhythmic, kinetic imagery
○ illustrates the exhaustive
effects of the modern world
upon the persona. The
repetition of “and” further
emphasises the repetitive
and mechanised nature of
● Personification of the ​‘evening’
pictures a distorted view of time
as a construct thus highlighting
that the citizens of the modern
world are subject to it as a
measurement of success.
● Prufrock
Shared notion of the
evening resting, seen
in the extract, ​“And the
afternoon, the evening,
sleeps so
peacefully!.../Asleep...tired
...or it malingers”.​ Prufrock
shows his resentfulness
towards those who are
able to sleep due to his
own insomnia, again
resultant of a fast-moving
society.
 the “tramlp[ing]” that has
resulted in stretching the
soul of a persona

Identity ● “His soul stretched tight across the

skies/ That fade behind a city
Existential Crisis block.”
○ illustrates the effect of this
incongruent society upon
an individual as being
strenuous and physically on
one’s soul
○ use of vivid imagery, Eliot
illustrates how
modernisation has
essentially “​stretched​” the
persona’s soul, which is not
even of importance as it
“​fade[s] behind a city block,​”
thus illustrating the isolation
and lack relevance the
persona undergoes
● “...like ancient women gathering
fuel in vacant lots”
○ Eliot’s zeitgeist of a soulless
society, deprived of the
ability to find spirituality
within.
● repetition of the word “​vacant​”, in
the first and last stanzas, with its
connotations of nihilistic isolation
 and desolation, provides an
ambiguous framework to the poem
as a whole.

Fragmentation of ● “Withered leaves…broken blinds”

society ○ symbolises the detrition of
both natural, and
Damaged Psyche of man-made objects, thus
Humanity highlighting an incongruent,
and figuratively
Isolation / Alienation deteriorating state of the
modern society
● accumulation of negative
adjectives, “​broken... lonely​”
foreshadows Eliot’s vision of
individuals devoid of hope, love or
spirituality, struggling in a
denatured urban milieu, “​The
thousand sordid images/ Of which
your soul is constituted​”.
● entropy reasserts itself and the
cycle of despair is reaffirmed as
“The worlds revolve like ancient
women” using a striking simile to
remind us of the inevitability
of modernist ennui. It is a vision of
an atomised world that offers little
hope of redemption.
● “you dozed, and watched the night
revealing/ The thousand sordid
images/ Of which your soul was
 constituted”
○ explores the nature of an
alienated life in urban
society
○ justifying how the urban
environment has
contributed to a fragmented
human condition.
● sordid images of the urban
environment to depict the
meaningless feelings of individuals
as each individual was just one of
“a thousand furnished rooms”,
Stressing the ephemerality of
urban life, and contributing to
isolation within an urbanised milieu.
● suggests that a possibility of
escaping this alienation within the
bleak environment was to employ
“...other masquerades...” to depict
false pretences and artificialities,
and thereby concealing their true
selves behind masks of deceit.
Rhapsody on a Windy Night
Theme / Idea Technique Link to Context Link to other Poems

Memory ● Street lamps ● Eliot himself states​ “a set of ● “old crab with
○ motif for the transcendence of objects, a situation, a chain of barnacles on his
Time time within a context of events, which shall be the back/gripped the
eternal ennui, and plays a key formula of that particular end of a stick”
Death / Decay role in depicting Eliot’s emotion”. ● Links to Prufrock
incomprehensibly despondent metaphorical of
and fragmented perception of humanity’s
the sensibilities of the human paralysed (upon an
condition. etherised table)
○ unable to speak, portrayed by condition even
the sibilance and harsh through to old age,
consonant sounds that where they come to
creates an enervated and regret their
lifeless atmosphere and ‘indecisions and
alludes to the lack of revisions” resulting
communication and in a less than
understanding of individual fulfilling life
purpose within society. (barnacles grown
● “twelve o’clock”, suit “Half-past one”, out of compliancy to
“Half past two”, “Half past three”, monotonous
finishing at​ “four o’clock”, lifestyle)
○ death-like atmosphere and ●
bleak tone portrayed by the
sinister and threatening street
 lamps
○ notions of desolation and
isolation, emphasised through
the harsh tone of the tri-sibylic
phrase and the assertive
punctuation, emblematic of
the industrialised world at
midnight.
○ interlinking with the
transcending motif of the
personified “street lamps”,
that are perhaps constructs of
human memory as a whole.
○ Suggests memory is in a way
dead as a result of the
process of industrialisation
and urbanisation within the
modernist period.
■ continuity of time
despite an individual
trapped in their own
thoughts within the
metaphysical realm
where time is not
apparent.
● the transience of life in comparison to
the fragmented longevity of time that
is experienced throughout Eliot’s
modern context, which can lead to
individual isolation.
● “I could see nothing behind that
child’s eyes,”
 ○ the children’s soulless beings,
despite having a significant
amount of time left to live, as
they are immersed into the
immorality present within the
modern epoch.
○ personified rhyming couplets
of the streetlights highlights
the stages of life from a
“​sputtering”​ baby, to the adult
“​muttering​”, and the final
“​humming​” of life support
machines prove that
eventuality of death cannot be
prevented,
● “the final twist of the knife,”
○ Metaphorical acceptance of
death
○ juxtaposing the “life” of the
previous line, acknowledges
the passage of time to be
eternal despite one’s
departure from the physical
realm of “life”, an ode to the
fragility of human existence.

Fragmentation of ● “​female smells in shuttered rooms /

Society and cigarettes in corridors/ and
cocktails smells in bars”​
Damaged Psyche of ○ Cumulative listing of decadent
Society olfactory imagery; anaphora
 similarly reinforces the sordid
and impersonal state of
human life - closed off and
superficial (extravagant night
life a mask/escape for listless
day-to-day routine)
● “lamp sputtered, muttered:
- Regard…
- Remark…
- Here is the number…
○ manmade object personified
as an imperative authority
figure; pun on
“enlightenment”, as the lamp
is giving the person
knowledge, but also ironic in
that the knowledge the lamp
imparts on them has no
meaningful values/morals -
alludes to modernity industrial
revolution - how machines
have negated humanity’s
material value
● “put your shoes at the door, sleep,
prepare, for life” “the last twist of
knife”
○ Final line metaphorical of a
psychological death of
modern man and possibly
modernity as a whole,
bounded by monotonous
routine all throughout life; time
 trope likewise indicative of
how practiced the motions
are, and that there is no hope
for humanity as they have
already assimilated to the
squalid lifestyle with no notion
of generating change or
individual opinion
○

Loss of Identity ● Lack of human connection and a ● Life is living death for the ● Prufrock - where
struggle to face society modern man with no identity, “ragged claws”​ are
Monotony ● “And old crab with barnacles on his and contemporary readers are a symbol of the
back” able to observe the struggles Prufrock’s
○ ghastly imagery symbolises and alienation of individuals imagination that has
the individuals within the within modern society where taken over his mind.
modern world who are there is a lack of community ●
bounded to conform to and identity.
society’s expectations. Eliot’s
use of the crab as an
objective correlative as a
metaphor of humanity being
oppressed in the modern
world accentuates the
struggle and insecurity of the
persona
○ The crab as an icon of
modern identity, living on the
slums, reduces humanity to a
scuttling creature through
avant garde imagery which
creates a complex and
 ambiguous meaning about
identity.
● “The last twist of the knife”
○ epitomises the persona’s
realisation that there is no
hope through the emotive
connotations and violent
image of the agony of living a
monotonous, half lived life.
○ highlighting the contorted, lost
individual of the modern world
who is unable to escape the
cyclical nature of the nature of
the routine of life.
○ a truncated sentence, Eliot
illustrates the fragmented
mindset of the persona that
has resulted a consequence
of alienation from the modern
society
● “I could see nothing behind that
child’s eye. / I have seen eyes in the
street.”
○ dramatic monologue - evident
through his adoption of the
first person narrative and free
verse structure within the
poem and highlights his
subjective portrayal of society
through the persona’s
subconscious perception of
the world
 ○ figuratively portrays a sense
of surrealistic imagery through
the repetitive motif of the
“eyes in the street.”
○ eyes illustrates his inability to
connect with any modern
soul, and therefore conveys a
sense of alienation for the
persona, and a sense of
tension

The Hollow Men

Theme / Idea Technique Link to Context Link to other Poems

Identity ● ‘Eyes i dare not meet in dreams’ ● Rhapsody

○ References Dante - cannot ○ Lack of
meet the eyes of his lover as human
he feels shame and has an connection
impure, tainted soul and a
● Ironic panic struggle to
○ Fearful tone and trying to face society
escape the gaze ○
 ○ Lack of connection and fear
of being watched within the
modernist world
comparatively to
contemporary contexts is
similar through the constant
survailience throughout
society and technology as
the primary medium of
communication which has
separated and isolated
individuals
● Sameness
● Lack of connection
● Universal pronoun of ‘we’ in the first
lines of the poem, the responder can
immediately relate to the feelings of
being ‘hollow’ and ‘stuffed’ and
reflect on their own times of despair.
● Epigraph - ​‘Mistah Kurtz, he dead?’
○ allusion to ‘Conrad’s Heart of
Darkness’, a text that deeply
influenced Eliot’s writing in
terms of its philosophical
resonance
○ metaphor for the loss of
society post world war
● Guy Fawkes
○ This represents societies
desperation to fill themselves
with something, an emotion,
a thought, or possibly just a
 form of food in the efforts to
survive during the economic
depression.

Damaged psyche of ● structure is broken into five parts,

humanity each suggesting a progression of
man’s deteriorating condition,
Fragmentation of life leading to an overwhelming sense of
humanity’s despair.
● “We are the hollow men, we are the
stuffed men”
○ Chant-link, monotonous
manner
○ Echo a sense of lack of self
● ‘Hollow’
○ Lack of moral code
● ‘Stuffed’
○ Implies fragility and lack of
substance
○ revealing the notion of
emotional numbness and
emptiness further explored
throughout the rest of the
poem.
○ paradoxical juxtaposition
● “We whisper together, are quiet and
meaningless as wind in dry grass or
rats feet over broken glass”.
○ Sense of meaningliess
○ simile and personification of
grass creates an abrasive
and hollow sound as a
 means of reflecting the tone
of the poem.
● Scarecrow imagery - ​“Let me also
wear such deliberate disguises-
Rat’s coat, crow skin, crossed
staves in a field”.
○ captures his criticism of the
failure of mankind to
acknowledge and face the
despair of their situation,
where Eliot suggests that this
inaction only leads to further
degeneration.
● anticlimactic ending
○ portrays an overwhelming
sense of emptiness and
futility through the imperative
tone​ “Not with a bang but a
whimper”​, highlighting the
ineffectual nature of the
protagonist in the urban hell
he lives in.
●

Time ● “dry grass / dry cellar”

○ Symbolises infertility
Death / Decay ○ reflective of the ‘hollow
men’s’ aptitude for indolence
○ unfulfilling nor ambitious
● “this is the dead land / cactus land”
○ reinforces the lifeless,
desert-like quality of the
 setting
○ the ‘hollow men’ similarly
offered no knowledge or
ambitions of value within
their lives
● “fading star”
○ Bibllical reference
○ Star is representative of
Jesus/savior and paradise,
and a hope to get there, but
their faith (or lack thereof)
dies along with the light fast
fading as their time run
closer to eternity
○

Journey of the Magi

Theme / Idea Technique Link to Context Link to other Poems

Identity ● “a cold coming we had of it”
○ Highlights the hardships of
Religion the journey itself recalling in
vivid visual imagery
○ alludes to the Andrewes
1622 nativity sermon
○ “the camels galled, sore
footed”
● marks a change in Eliot’s
spiritual convictions and his
conversion to the Church of
England
● relays a message that religion
offers no more solace than
being belief-less does in a
modern world.
● Magus then alludes
to this again in “a
hard coming we had
of it” to exaggerate
this sense of
uncertainty.
● Prufrock - explores
the importance of
 ● Despite the “long journey,” Eliot ● meaning within
provides his readers with a finality individuals lives, in
to the search for meaning, which he that it provides a
perceives to be his religious sense of purpose
epiphany and conversion to and control against
Christianity. the mundanity and
● pressures of
modern society.
●

Death ● Bleak imagery of cold and decay

reflects an underlying sense of a
Time world which is passing away
○ ‘Worst’, ‘long’, ‘ways deep’,
‘dead’
● “weather sharp / very dead of winter
/ melted snow”
● contrasted with “wet…smelling of
vegetation / running stream and
water-mill beating in the darkness”
● mourning of​ “summer palaces....the
terraces....(and) the silken girls
bringing sherbet,”
○ demise of a culture.
● struggles with the paradox that
Christ was born to die
● The final line of the poem ​“I should
be glad of another death”
○ shows that this member of
the Magi no longer fears
physical death but is
moreover glad for an afterlife
 after salvation.

Suffering ● reveals how loss of meaning in ● Like Prufrock, the

human existence creates a moral persona feels
Damaged psyche of wasteland in which a universal plan alienated from his
Humanity is difficult to ascertain. own world and ​“with
● Fear of truth and judgment from a an alien people
society where God might as well not clutching their
exist, and similar inner doubts of the gods”​, ironically
existence of something intangible suggesting that the
● “lack of shelters / cities birth of Christ has
hostile…towns unfriendly / villages also marked the
dirty and charging high prices” death of his own
○ Metonymy disassociated culture.
attitudes of society ● “But there was no
representative of city as a information…finding
whole fear of change the place; it was
causes them to shun such (you might say)
visitors who seek answers satisfactory”
and look for truth, when they ○ Understatem
themselves cannot provide ent wry tone
solutions to their own contrasts the
insecurities and indecisions hyperbolised
already given up hope of woes of
salvation Eliot’s
○ previous
● protagonists
from
“Rhapsody
“and
“Prufrock”,
or the
 plights/dissat
isfaction of
Preludes’s
citizens with
the
deleteriousn
ess of their
living states
and
mindscapes
●