Allusion is an indirect reference to another text which T.S Eliot extensively uses - as quoted by him “Good writers steal, bad writers merely borrow”. An example of Eliot’s use of allusion is in Prufrock, where Eliot refers to a character like Prufrock with two sides, Shakespeare’s Hamlet - “To be, or not to be”. In the poem, the reference to Hamlet appears as “No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be…” and a different reference to the Bible is quoted where Prufrock exclaims “I am Lazrus, come from the dead…”. In addition, the use of rhetorical questions, (which don’t require an answer), helps distinguish the trupe personality of Prufrock, the main male character. One side of Prufrock is an unsure, hesitant and pessimistic man – whereas the other is a brave, fearless and confident “Prufrock”. He constantly asks himself “Do I dare? … Do I dare?” to ask for a lady’s hand in marriage, it is here where he questions his courage. Also “Shall I part my hair behind? … Shall I wear white flannel trousers?” shows his constant worry of his appearance to impress the woman of his dreams. The final, most distinguishing modernist technique that Eliot uses is the concept of a free-verse. It encompasses lines of irregular and different lengths to satirize a situation, similar to the modernist music of Stravinsky and his unpredictable rhythm. In Prufrock it is used to satirical situation of the women discussing Michelangelo : “In the room, the women come and go … Talking of Michelangelo”.
The monotonous, repetitive and routine life of the working class in London and it’s smog is what Eliot closely refers to in many of his poems. In Preludes, Eliot uses the concept of time to separate each stanza as a part of the day, similarly with the passing of “midnight” and “half-past one” in his latter poem Rhapsody on a Windy Night. The working class woman, in Preludes feels trapped and mirrored by life’s pretensions, “That time resumes…One thinks of all the hands …That are raising dingy shades…In a thousand furnished rooms”. Eliot’s perception of the human condition for the working class society is illustrated through “the notion of some infinitely gentle … Infinitely suffering thing…”. The repetition of the words “smoke”, “lamps”, “feet” and “fog” reiterate the feeling of a slum, city life. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is also set in an urban landscape, with the “half deserted streets” and the “yellow fog” of the urban, industrial world in the modern age - in particular London, where Eliot lived most of his working life in.
Eliot’s life at the time of writing Prufrock is one of the things which influenced his writing of the poem. Written in 1911, a few years prior to Eliot’s marriage to marrying Vivienne Wood, Eliot illustrated his mixed feeling of love in his poem, and the insecurities of the world at the time with the social upsets such as the rise of the feminist movement and the question of a fair society. Women’s social status was also changing at the time, and Eliot’s view of women is slightly different to the view of women in earlier poetry. He refers to women with much more sophistication and higher high social status in Prufrock. This is perhaps due to the issue of feminism raised in the early 1900’s in America, where Eliot lived the first eighteen years of his life : “In the room the women come and go … Talking of Michelangelo”. Here, Eliot describes the women as polite and educated, with the right to speak freely. Prufrocks concerned looks over “hair growing thin” and whether he should “part it from behind”, may also have been concerns of Eliot himself being in love, leading up to his first marriage three years after writing The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Prufrock’s wish for marriage represents the power of the subconscious. The opening sentence “Let us go then, you and I ” is an example of Prufrock’s inner self speaking to his outer self. As the poem flows, the attitude from “I will go” changes to a hesitant “I might go”. This is a response to the idea of Prufrock approaching the woman he loves to ask her for her hand in marriage.
Thus you can see how the Eliot reflects some of the major concerns of the context – modernism. The modernist movement broke away from the rules of romantic poetry in terms of structure. It also looked away from the beauty of nature and focused upon the “ugliness of urbanisation”, the power of the subconscious and the social issues such as women and the working class society. Eliot’s poems Preludes and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock are specimens of true modernist poetry which reflect the major concerns of the modernist time.
