T.S Eliot quotes Flashcards
(36 cards)
“The winter evening settles down”
-romanticism, personification
• Opens the poem with a romantic setting
“The smell of steaks in passageways”
-The sibilance contrasts the previous romantic imagery
• Reveals claustrophobic living on 20th century housing
“Withered leaves …from vacant lots” and a “lonely cab-horse”
-paradox to the presence of life above, isolating images
• That although there is a presence of people, the world feels empty as people have lost their liveliness and souls that allow for interpersonal relationships.
“muddy feet that press” and “all the hands… raising dingy shades”
-Synecdoche, pejorative descriptors
• Supports the lack of individuality through the dehumanisation of man into fragments of a broken picture, man has become devalued due to its uniformity in the urban realm.
“Masquerades/ That time resumes”
-metaphor of life
• Critiques a world where identity is a performance, lacking in authenticity and worth causing readers to questions the 20th century industrial reality as a miserable world where individuality and aspirations are quashed.
“clasping the yellow soles of feet / In the palms of both soiled hands”
-Poignant characterisation of the woman
• Reveals the squalid and impoverished existence Eliot stereotypes in the urban realm and the vision of humanity as morally corrupt and decayed.
“I am moved by fancies that are curled/ Around these images, and cling”
-Eliots hopeful personal voice
• Reveals that humanity’s suffering might conclude and will find purpose.
“Laughable”
-contradicts the hopeful language above
“revolve like ancient woman / gathering fuel in vacant lots”
-Melancholic simile of urban existence • evokes the inescapable decay and futility, and the diurnal routine of the working class will leave people feeling eternally unfulfilled.
“Dissolve the floors of memory and all its clear relations”
-Objectifies memory
• Reveals how our memory or minds cannot escape the overwhelming visions of decay, degeneracy and despair in the modern world.
“Beats like a fatalistic drum”
-simile
• The inescapable routine of industrial world over human wellbeing
“Midnight shakes the memory”
-personification of midnight
• reveals how memory is tampered with the visions of decay by the villainous ‘midnight’, a symbol of evil and crime.
“that woman who hesitates toward you”
-Insecure, uncertain and fearful language
• Reveals the lack of deeper interpersonal connections in the 20th century industrial world, where the extreme poverty and false hope of ‘prosperous’, resulted in many woman undertaking prostitution.
“see the corner of her eye twists like a crooked pin”
-simile of predatory and sinister connotations in her brothel work
• Suggests the immoral distortion of values.
“Eaten smooth, and polished… gave up the secret of its skeleton”
-Juxtaposition
• Juxtaposition between prestige (polished) and death (skeleton) exposes the reality of life as a spiritually and emotionally suffering existence, the truth of life in the urban realm.
“I could see nothing behind that child eye”
-Motif of eye
• reveals the anomie that the industrialisation has brought up. The automatic processes of the industrial era means even the innocent children are now thoughtless, soulless and lacking in value.
“The last twist of the knife”
-Symbol of sleep as the final escape from life to death.
Reveals the painful nature of living a meaningless life in the 20th century urban realm where modern mans only escape is sleep or unconsciousness.
“Let us go”
-Irony in tripartite listing in first stanza
• evoking a sense of confident movement towards some location or achievement however, irony exists in that as poem continues, Prufrock journeys nowhere
“The evening spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherised upon a table”
-Simile
• Subverts any hope for Romantic beauty in existence, and instead presents a disturbing symbol of mans overwhelming paralysis.
“Love song”
-Form of poem
• Suggesting Prufrock will be high of passion, a romanticism.
“How should I begin?…How should I presume?
-Incessant questioning
• Underlines his cowardice and reveals how rather the ‘romantic’ form is parodic, appearing more as a tragic lament.
“I am no prince hamlet, or was meant to be”
-Allusion to Shakespeare’s Hamlet
• Aligns Prufrock with hamlets crippling indecisiveness, but denies him any of hamlets heroism or acuity.
“till human voices wake us and we drown”
-Morbid conclusion
• Denies our hope for romantic views, instead leaves readers with an image of man characterised by fear and torpor, overwhelmed and paralysed by an inherently meaningless existence.
“Headpiece filled with straw”
-Extended metaphor
• Links to Guy Fawkes effigies of heads full of trivial thoughts > that mankind is a metaphorical scarecrow, stuffed with his own self-importance and therefore failing to comprehend the importance of faith.
