Module B: Prufrock quotes

Question 1

flaneur figure
- Freudian split of the self between the ego and superego
- illusion of conversation between speaker and responder

Answer 1

“Let us go then, you and I”

Question 2

ant-aesthetic imagery
- allusion to something dying, ill, sick, weakness
- shows his critical perspective of the world

Answer 2

“When the evening is spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherized upon a table;”

Question 3

literary fragmentation
- allusion to soldered, tainted world of the city –> extension of how persona feels about himself
- self-gratification, transgression
- cynical atmospheere

Answer 3

“Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels/ And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells”

Question 4

motif, intertextuality
- allusion to Michelangelo –> Renaissance sculptor and painter who created David
- Eurocentric, Renaissance, idealised masculinity
- cultural pretentiousness
- prufrock is insecure, scared of rejection

Answer 4

“In the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo”

Question 5

objective correlative, zoomorphism
- symptomen of industrialised world
- pathetic fallacy of persona’s own miasma of fog –> something impenetrable
- allusion to cat’s muzzle
- dangerous, predatory
- disorientation, existential confusion

Answer 5

“The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes/ The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes”

Question 6

motif, high modality
- burgogian notion of time –> more psychological less chronological
- anti-romantic, more real depiction of how time is perceived
- trying to convince himself, irony because there really is no time

Answer 6

“And indeed there will be time/ For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,/ Rubbing its back upon the window-panes/ There will be time, there will be time”

Question 7

parentheses, musicality
- search for philosophical consolation
- general miasma of insecurity
- psychological instability, feels inferior to David
- ascribes his speech on other people, asserting own insecurities on others

Answer 7

“To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”… (They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)…(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!)”

Question 8

free verse, enjambment
- constantly oscillating in this paralysis and stasis because he makes a decision, he must revise it

Answer 8

“Do I dare/ Disturb the universe?/ In a minute there is time/ For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.”