“The burnt-out ends of smoky days”. The language is innovative because it evocatively portrays modern society: a place where people’s lives are empty and purposeless within these routines that appear inevitable. Eliot presents a series of disjointed images like “Burial of The Dead” in “The Wasteland”. The “newspapers” and “grimy scraps” act as snap shots into modern society: polluted and decaying and in desperate need of spiritual regeneration. The image of beauty of nature is relegated to the level of the city gutters. In this way Eliot effectively conveys his views on modern society. The use of synecdoche emphasises Eliot’s view of an empty, pathetic soulless society. The people are reduced to “muddy feet”, and this highlights to the reader the impersonal and purely commercial nature of modern society. The prostitute is reduced to only hair, feet and hands. Previously the people rushing home were merely “feet”. Eliot employs the use of this literary technique to show the partial fragmented lives people lead. They have no sense of personal identity or spiritual wholeness.
Modern society makes people alienated, anxious and trapped. This view is seen in the poem “The Love Song Of J Alfred Prufrock”. Modern society has become a place where inane social rituals prevails; a place where individuals are repressed, alienated and no longer in contact with a meaningful existence. Prufrock’s repression by social conventions are conveyed predominantly through metaphor and imagery. The persona points obliquely to the meaningless world of “tea and cakes and ices.” These inane rituals are superficial and pretentious just like society itself. Prufrock lives in a society where women judge him and say, “How his hair is growing thin”.
Roger Mitchell noted, “J Alfred Prufrock is not just the speaker of the poems. He is the representative man of early modernism.” Prufrock is constantly conscious of his actions and self-presentation and the need to act in accordance with social expectations. Prufrock cannot be himself; he has to “prepare a face”. Factors restrict him forcing him to behave in socially prescribed ways and eventually alienating him from his ‘other’ self that aspires to live fully.
The title of the poem suggests potential happiness and involvement in life but it is immediately undercut by the epigraph from Dante’s inferno. This poem is a critique of modern society. The imagery of hell in Dante’s inferno parallels Prufock’s own inner hell of isolation and loveless ness. Just as Guido is imprisoned in a flame, Prufrock’s inner self is imprisoned in a world where he cannot tell of his feelings and desires. He cannot communicate with the women. The inclusion of the epigraph is effective in portraying Eliot’s view on modern society through the eyes of the persona. This is another innovative way that Eliot uses poetic form, language and imagery to convey his views.
“Do I dare disturb the universe?”
Eliot also uses questions to demonstrate the uncertainty of Prufrock himself, posing questions as a means to escape having to act with courage. The use of questions is an innovative device within the form that shows him posing questions. This also acts as a parallel for modern society. The people like Prufrock are indecisive and reluctant to act. Prufrock wants to know the meaning of life but is feardul of any explanation that might also destroy the ideal. He is not moving forward instead he likens himself to a “crab”. This gives an insight into the persona because a crab moves sideways and is very indecisive. Prufrock like society is not moving forward, and has no purpose.
Eliot invites the reader to share in his thoughts on modern society.
“Let us go then you and I.” The reader is also drawn into Eliot’s thoughts and feelings through the vivid imagery. The poem contains a lot of imagery and metaphors of pollution to describe the town. This perhaps describes society too which has become polluted and materialistic, merely concerned with “tea and cakes and ices.” The fog is “yellow”. The fog cat metaphor presents the city as stifling and claustrophobic.
This image of sickness and dirt is dominant throughout the poem, and just like the “yellow smoke that slides along the street”, the sickness is a like a smell it seeps un noticed into society and envelops it causing decay and distraction from spiritual well being. This sibilance portrays a sinister invasion by the yellow smoke. The repetition of “yellow” emphasises the pollution, dirt and corruption that has entered society. Eliot provokes an image of disease and death:
“The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window panes.” Eliot uses innovative language to present a modern city by using distressing imagery and metaphors.
Eliot is concerned with the isolation that modernity brings. People become too autonomous and time controls their lives. They do not communicate and thus become alienated and are reduced to “muddy feet that press”. The repetition of:
“At four and five and six o’clock” is used to suggest the monotony and repetition of the activities undertaken at these times both in tone and rhythm, just like the “typist home at teatime”. The use of time is very effective in portraying the autonomy of modern society. In “The Wasteland”, Eliot gives us a view of the city being “unreal”. Life in the city is not only “unreal” but also immensely monotonous. People are submerged into routine so much so that “each man fixed his eyes before his feet”. This implies a somewhat robotic existence that modern society has adopted. The experience of the city shows modern life to be dull. The language used to describe this city is dull and grim:
“Under the brown fog of a winter dawn”. The city has become polluted, and this is shown by the use of the word “brown” to describe the fog. People seem to be living life in death, “with a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.” Eliot’s key ideas about modern life feature heavily in “Rhapsody on a Windy Night”. His innovation comes in the form of the use of personification.
“The street-lamp sputtered
The street-lamp muttered
The street-lamp said…” The speech emphasises the device of personification of all street lamps being one just like how society has become one mass movement. There is no persona and distinction anymore implying that the street lamps are more important than humans. The imagery is dark, twisted: “twists like a crooked pin” and full of decay: “skeleton”. There is “rust that clings to the form”. The imagery shows society’s obsession with death: “The secret of it skeleton”, the sordid affairs of people “trying to peer through lighted shutters.”
“The last twist of the knife.” The twist of the knife connects with the twisted imagery throughout the poem and shows the death in life situation of the persona. Death is not quick of penetrating thrust of the knife but the persona has to bear the agony of feeling twists of metaphorical knife of alienating routines.
In Prufrock, Eliot uses innovation. He juxtaposes the usual beauty and romance associated with the evening sky with the sterility of an etherised patient awaiting surgery. The metaphor of paralysis is effective because it gives an insight into the persona’s psychological state, showing his own inaction like the comatose patient while also showing that the persona cannot relate to the beauty of the world. The themes of purposelessness and time are also present in “Prufrock”.
“And indeed there will be time.” However we know this not to be true because time is a metaphor for death and morality. The Endless repetition of time highlights the lack of personal progress and the lack of achievement as time passes.
“I have measured out my life in coffee spoons”. This captures the unfulfilling nature of Prufock’s life. His life is carefully calculated and lived in small measured amounts.. We can see the persona’s anguish as he sees himself pinned painfully by convention:
“I am formulate, sprawling on a pin.” The closing section of the poem is the most tragic. The language used; the use of I ten times in 7 lines:
“I grow old…I grow old…
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled…” makes the tragedy more complete showing more than anywhere in the poem, the persona fully comprehending his alienated situation. This also demonstrates the loneliness of every person and their fears of death and growing old. The change in form from ‘I’ to ‘We’ in the last stanza is Eliot’s way of suggesting that perhaps Prufrock is not alone in his failure to live out his desires.
Eliot thinks that society has become mechanical and spiritually empty. The people who live in this modern society are leading lives that are meaningless and unfulfilling. Eliot is successful in creating through his poems a truly powerful portrait of the drab lives we lead in our dreary modern cities where people work and live their whole lives in a mechanical, almost robot-like fashion. Eliot employs the use innovative literary techniques like metaphors, rhythm and personification to demonstrate how empty our lives are. Eliot is innovative because he presents meaning through form and structure. We understand his views on the empty modern society by the ways in which he incorporates synecdoche, repetition, isolation of words, questions, and the use of the persona. All these methods help to portray images of a decaying, mechanical society.
