mod b trial prep Flashcards
modern world
yellow fog
prufrock
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
modern world/isolation
known
prufrock
For I have known them all already, known them all:
- repetition, exhuasted
- superficiality
- compounded sense of isolation, futility
- static sense of isolation
- asyndeton of “evenings, mornings, afternoons”
isolation, futility
claws
prufrock
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
futility, modern world
street-lamp
rhapsody
The street lamp sputtered, the street-lamp muttered
- personfication
- motif
- fragmentation
- dissociative nature
- facilitates series of vignettes
- illuminates darkness of modern world
- imagism - ezra pound
- reflects darkness of modern world
- anti-aesthetic imagery
- parallel syntax - enhances isolation of persona
- sordid and solitary existence of flaneur
futility, modern world
geranium
rhapsody
midnight shakes the memory, as a madman shakes a dead geranium
- similie
- anti-aesthetic imagery of flowers
- juxtaposition - society’s willingness to murder the toughest of plants
- geraniums symbolise everyday life
- reminder of what life once was, but is no longer - geraniums once possessed beauty but no longer do as they have been neglected
- persona is in moonlight rather than sunligh - sense of fatalism
- flowers symbolise a sense of vivacity, reminder that everything of substance will fade
- from french symbolist Jules Laforgue
- describing lunacy, or temporary insanity brought by changes in the moon
- absurdity of image represents the complexities of the modern pysche and loss of ontological ground - struggle for deeper meaning
- motif of time - fragmentation, fragmented nature of poem and reflection of the modern psyche
- fractured, dispered structure of poem reflects the sense of dispersion in modernist life in his time
- inevitability of one’s mortality with each passage of time
- time attempts to add structure to the poem, as it the only location of meaning of stability and meaning in the poem among the decay of urban life in the landscape
futility
paper rose
rhapsody
a washed-out smallpox cracks her face, her hand twists out a paper rose
- anti-aesthetic imagery of disease paralleled with the traditionally beautiful rose
- representation of identity breaking apart - disonnection, struggle for companionship
- inevitability of death
- paper symbolises fragility of flower, artifical
- continued flower imagery
futility
shape
hollow men
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
- fragmentation - mirros hollow/stuffed men
- unfulfillment
- paradox
- anti-aesthetic imagery
futilty
cactus
hollow men
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
- anaphora
- dry, no water - symbolises lack of fulfillment (lack of water)
- water symbolises fulfillment
- religious allusion to baptimism - new life
modern world
prickly pear
hollow men
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.
- parody of nursery rhyme, fertility dance
- mulberry dance = prickly pear r
- continued anti-aesthetic desert imagery (dry = lack of fulfillment)
- musical motif is continued in hollow men
- subversion of musical tropes
- ironic use of nursery rhyme - satire, paradox of death
- concludes poem with reference to youth - ironic, contrasts morbid tone
complex nature of spiritual rebirth and suffering
weather
journey of magi
“The ways deep and the weather sharp, the very dead of winter,”
pathetic fallacy, geographical and seasonal imagery, symbolism
* symbolism of winter and cold to allude to death and moral decay - depciting the existential crisis before epiphany which foreshadows the spiritual journey the persona embarks on
* setting reflects feelings of alienation through pathetic fallacy
complex nature of spiritual rebirth and suffering
villages
journey of magi
“And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices”
polysyndeton, descriptive language
* language of “lack”, “hostile”, “unfriendly”, “dirty” -> journey towards enlightenment is arduous but necessary
* eliot is not subverting images in the same was as of Hollow Men or Prufrock
* magi has not chosen easy road of pleasure, chosen demanding path of virtue - spiritual fulfilment > materialistic desires of a capitalist world
* high prices show impact of increasing modernity which results in the existential crisis that can only be resolved through finding a spiritual meaning
complex nature of spiritual rebirth and suffering
satisfactory
“(you might say) satisfactory”
tone of confusion, low modality, irony, euphemism
* result of spiritual journey is not entirely fulfilling nor does it resolve their existential crisis
* euphemism to mask the true nature of magi’s feelings
* ambivalence is couched in faith to mirror the complex emotional and spiritual states the magi experience throughout their journey
