Leavis said, “The poem represents a complete break with 19th century tradition and a new start”. John, Lazarus, Hamlet in order to contrast the great values of the past with those represented by Prufrock. It satirises ‘love’ as well as the present social set up.Įliot uses a method of dramatic opposition. The poem registers modern man’s frustrations anguish and despair. There is his symbolic ‘drowning’ with the sea-girls ‘till human voices wake’. He escapes into the world of fantasy into a world of unreal love with mermaids. He says that he will be under the sea of senses till the spirit within himself lifts him up. Notice the comic-ironic effect of the scene. Notice the ironic juxtaposition of the serious and the trivial.Prufrock falls back into trivial speculations whether he shall eat a peach or part his hair behind. But suddenly he is arrested by his thought of old age he says, He is ‘Politic, cautious and meticulous’. He is conscious about his incapability, weakness, failures, inferiority and timidity. But if he decides to meet the women, he thinks, how should he meet them? How should he begin talking with them? He is quite helpless and undecided. He recognizes his passion but cannot rise to it.
He is troubled but his own confused desires. He is unable to communicate with other people. Prufrock finds himself uncomfortable in the crowded parties. But he says, “I have measured my life with coffee spoons”. Further, Prufrock says that he has already known the women, their evenings, afternoons and mornings. He needs some more time to pluck up courage.
Prufrock is culture –conscious and fashionable. Yet he shows his mock-heroic behaviour through the images of ‘collar mounting firmly to the chin’, ‘necktie rich and modest’ and in his thought of disturbing the world. His weakness and debility is exposed through the images of ‘descending stair’, ‘bald spot on the head’, ‘hair growing thin’ etc. He is incapable of love –physically and spiritually. But Prufrock is, now, suffering from signs of old age.
0 kommentar(er)
