mod. b: the love song of j. alfred prufrock Flashcards
1
Q
modern world
yellow fog
prufrock
A
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
- motif
- symbolises industrialisation, urbanisation
- anti-aesthetic imagery
- miasma
- personification
- reflection of a toxic, sordid, suffocating world
- predictable, disturbing, dangerous urban landscape
2
Q
modern world/isolation
known
prufrock
A
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
- repetition, exhuasted
- superficiality
- compounded sense of isolation, futility
- static sense of isolation
- asyndeton of “evenings, mornings, afternoons”
2
Q
isolation, futility
claws
prufrock
A
I should have been a pair of ragged claws, Scuttling across the floors of silent seas
- symbolism of ocean to represent persona’s emotional distance from the modern world
- insecurity to compare oneself to a scavenger animals = sense of futility, worthlessness
- anti-romantic imagery of ocean
- alliteration
- interjection = fragmentation (form)
- synechdoche of crab
- symbolises how humanity in the face of developing modernity sustains themsleves on inadequate substance
- modern world fails to fulfill people
3
Q
futility, modern world
wriggling
prufrock
A
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
- insect imagery = inferior –> scavenger imagery
- cigarette butt-ends
- dark urban, grimey imagery of landscape
- subverted imagery
4
Q
futility, isolation
drown
prufrock
A
“till human voices wake us, and we drown”
- subversion of ocean imagery
- morbid wish for death due to futilility caused by the modern world
- collective drowning “I” to “we”
- persona surrenders and is helpless to modernity
- depicts persona’s failed attempt to transcend the futile existence through introspection which results in estrangement in society
