Characters created by Eliot and Yeats in their Poetry

Compare the ways in which Eliot and Yeats create characters in their poetry. (Must include detailed discussion of ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’)

Both Eliot and Yeats create strong and powerful images of characters within their poems. Although growing up under very different circumstances, Eliot originally being born and brought up in the United States and Yeats being born and brought up in Ireland shows just how much these two poets have backgrounds worlds apart. They then moved to England within their younger lives to the London, the capital city of England. Although they lived these very separate lives there are clear links and comparisons between there poetry and within their characters.

T.S Eliot’s poem which creates the strongest character throughout is ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’. The poem, when first published was ‘shocking’ to the 19th century Georgian audience, due to the socially accepted ‘romantic poetry’ at the time. Although Eliot’s title to the poem suggests to the reader or audience something which will be romantic, which the poem satisfies at the start, ‘Let us go then, you and I’. This first line of the poem not only draws the reader into the poem, but creates a character out of them, this is done the use of language Eliot has chosen ‘you’, the second character ‘I’ leaves us with a question. Who is it, J. Alfred Prufrock as the title suggests, or T.S Eliot himself?

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He then continues his poem in a romantic way ‘When the evening is spread out against the sky’; this again paints a picture in the readers’ mind of the setting in which Eliot is creating. However the romantic setting of the poem changes as Eliot describes ‘the evening is spread out against the sky’, by saying, ‘Like a patient etherised upon a table’. This then literally makes the reader think about what they have just heard; the romantic image they had created in their mind would be replaced by an ugly image of a still body laying upon a table of some sort, depending on the readers own experiences and background, it may be a steel table like found in an operating theatre, or simply a wooden dinner table. Due to the powerful characters Eliot created in the poem, one being the reader, the images Eliot creates have a strong impact on the reader.

The modernist poet also has created an undivided opinion on critics to whether the characters created in ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ actually leave the room in which the characters enter. He continues pulling in the reader as a character into the poem, ‘Let us go and make our visit’. The word ‘us’ creating the same affects on the reader as it did at the start ‘you and I’.

W.B Yeats also creates a strong character within his poem ‘Adam’s Curse’. The poem contains three characters, Yeats, Maud Gonne, and a friend. Yeats uses the same technique as Eliot to bring the reader into the poem, ‘you and I’ however unlike Eliot; Yeats does not intend the reader to be the ‘you’ although aimed at them. By the ‘you’ I believe that Yeats intends Maud Gonne to be the reader of the poem, and so interpret that herself is the ‘you’ within the poem. However Yeats deliberately uses the word ‘you’ instead of saying Maud Gonne, as a technique to actually draw the reader into the poem. The character is further created in the poem and brought to life in the reader mind, by the descriptions he uses, ‘That beautiful mild woman’. This is also used in Yeats ideas that to be a beautiful women have to put in a lot of effort, ‘we must labour to be beautiful’ He speaks in the voice of either Maud Gonne or her friend, who are the two other characters present within the poem, to emphasis the effect that even the women agree with the point Yeats is putting across to the reader.

Yeats is also fascinated with Greek Mythology, in which he takes characters from the Greek Myths and uses them as characters in the poem. This is seen in Yeats poem ‘No Second Troy’. He uses the character of Helen of Troy, or so we assume due to him talking about the event which happen within the poem following the Greek myth, to describe his love Maud Gonne. The poem is almost a metaphor for his feelings towards Maud Gonne, and what she has went and done to him, ‘Was there another Troy for her to burn?’ This is the final line of the poem, in which Yeats questions whether she will again ruin another mans life like she has ruined his.

There are similarities between the two poets creation of characters within the poem, however there are significant differences. Eliot creates a character in which we are not sure just who they are, however Yeats uses characters in which we know who they are as long as we his background and context. Yeats also portrays his characters slightly blunter than Eliot, Eliot portrays the in a subtle way in which leaves a question in our minds on who the other character is, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ being the strongest example of this. However both poets, Eliot and Yeats create interesting, important, and powerful characters through their techniques, both individual and shared.

Word Count: 900 words.