Analysis of The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock/ Rhapsody on a Windy Night/ Preludes

Resource Description

Themes

Emotional & Moral Decay

• Eliot sustains a strong theme of decay of the human spirit. He viewed the impact of industrialisation on one’s own sense of self & utilised a modernised style to convey how the world has lessened the importance of traditional values as a cause of decay

The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

→ Prufrock’s emotional & moral decay is evident in the poem’s structure

• The opening stanzas are of length & digression which represents Prurock’s dithering personality whilst the final stanzas are short & vague, representing his lack of energy & unwillingness to continue as well as decay
• “At times, the fool” demonstrates how he as an individual is so afraid of judgement, that he mocks himself, Prufrock cannot but help, perversely laugh at himself, aiming to criticise his every move in order to make himself better
• Eliot employs insertions of intertextual references & allusions to Lazerus, Dante’s Inferno & also Hamlet  to demonstrate Prufrock’s lacking imagination – he cannot even claim originality over his own thoughts as he has to compare himself to others “No! I am not Prince Hamlet” – he sees himself as inconsequential whilst also embodying Hamlet’s qualities such as self pity & unhappiness
• His allusion to Lazarus, “come from the dead”, promotes an image of resurrection to return & rejoice, he puts on his delusion & illusion to portray a fantasy of love & intimacy
• ‘The Love Song’ opens with an epigraph from Dante’s inferno
• This negative allusion to Hell, when depicted with Prufrock’s attachment from life establishes the tone of the poem to be one of rotting spirituality
• The presence of existentialism rebels against traditional romantic values & contrasts any spiritual awareness

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

• Eliot uses the dichotomy between natural light of the moon symbolising love & also the artificial light of the street lamp to symbolise the decay of love & a broken society, as a result of modernism
• The streetlamp symbolises the rise of urbanisation & thus a decline in traditional values
• The ‘street lamp’ put things in a bad light, reflecting modernism’s approach to reality, eg gross imagery of the woman & moon
• The visual imagery of the cat and his “rancid butter” explores the idea that humans are desperate for a release from the monotonous cycle that they’re in and it demonstrates Eliot’s perception of the reality of life, and of the moon and her “paper rose”, symbolising the frailty of love in the modern world
• The use of olfactory imagery of “female smells” & “cocktail smells” convey the heightened value of sex & its prominance over love & morals in a contemporary, more decayed world

Preludes

• Eliot uses an aggregation of negative urban images “burnt out… grimy scraps… muddy feet” to reflect a disintegration of the modern world
• Furthermore, the inextricable connection between the internal & external world is expressed by the assimilation of the persona’s soul with the city street “trampled by insistent feet” reflects how the modern city lifestyle such as urbanisation assists in the decay in the soul of humanity
• Eliot also explores this through the decay of emotion through the paradox of some “infinitely gentle thing”. This reduces pain in the modern world to a commonplace & an emotion

“The conscience of a blackened street” acts as a metaphor for for the spread of immortality in the modern world