Prufrock Flashcards
T.S. Eliot was born in …., attended … –> to graduate you had to defend and write a … and recite large swatches of … –> Eliot didn’t …
St. Louis; Harvard; thesis; historical text; defend
Eliot wanted to be … –> way of entering into global …
British; conversation
Eliot came to be known through …, who was … after …’s fall
Ezra Pound; imprisoned; Mussolini’s
imagism: in poetry, should make you
see something
… –> Eliot’s most famous poem, a phrase he used to describe …
The Wasteland; Europe
In ancient days, all poems were known as…. –> bards … their poems
songs; sang
love song is a
love poem
J Alfred –> not a name that elicits … or …
passion; eros
dramatic monologue/persona poem
dramatic: poem’s spearker is not …, it is a ….
monologue: 1 person speaking, written from perspective of 1 speaker
persona –> …
author; character; mask
names (J. Alfred and T.S. Eliot) are …, maybe the poem is a …
similar; confession
poem begins with an … epigraph–> small excerpt from another piece of lit in reference to the piece of lit its included in
comes from …–> … Shakespeare in the; he wrote in the …th century
Italian; Dante; Italian; 13
(Dante’s Hell) … circles
1st circle: … –> place that houses all … and … people who lived before … existed
9; limbo; good; virtuous; baptism
(Dante’s Hell) 2nd circle: for those who commited sins of … –> can’t …, thrust back and forth by … to show that … causes …
lust; sleep; winds; lust; restlessness
(Dante’s Hell) places with many people and someone walking through and
observing it
(Dante’s Hell) 3rd circle: for sins of … –> people who can’t have enough of ..; encased in … of … with … that….
gluttony; anything; tomb; slush; worm monster; eats people
(Dante’s Hell) 4th circle: for those who committed sins of … –> crushed by …
greed; weight
(Dante’s Hell) 5th circle: … —> the … for …
anger; angry fight each other; eternity
(Dante’s Hell) 6th circle: …/… —> trapped in tombs that are always …
heretics; heresy; on fire
(Dante’s Hell) 7th circle: sins of … –> sink in river of …
violence; burning blood
(Dante’s Hell) 8th circle: … –> body … and you’re replaced by …
fraud; taken away from you; a single flame
(Dante’s Hell) 9th circle: … –> encased in … from … down ; includes …
treachery; ice; waist; Satan
(Dante’s Hell) speaker for epigraph is
Guido da Montefeltro
(Dante’s Hell) Guido is in the … circle of Hell–> converted to Catholicism and became … –> counsel to …; tried to … God
8th; Franciscan monk; Pope; outsmart
(Dante’s Hell) epigraph is from canto … of the …
27; Inferno
(Dante’s Hell) If you can’t read Dante in its original form, then you don’t deserve to read Eliot’s poem
Guido tells Dante his story bc he thinks that no one can … 8th circle, but this is … bc Dante goes back to …a nd … —> Guido trying to preserve his …
escape; dramatic irony; Earth; reports it; reputation
(Dante’s Hell) Epigraph is a voice in … saying he will …
poem begins with the voice of the …
suffering; tell his story; damned
“Let us go then, you and I,” –> speaking to …, J. wants us to go with him
reader
“When the evening is spread out against the sky” –>
evening: time in … of time: neither … nor …; … in time
middle; afternoon; night; halfway
“Life a patient etherized upon a table;”
etherized: … (…)
half state of being: looks like a … –> sounds like a … invitation
anesthetized; ether; dead person; horrifying
“Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats”
repeat of let us go makes the 1st invitation seem more …
half-deserted speaks …
muttering: talking beneath your …
people walking around …
insisting; trouble; breath; muttering
“Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels”
restless nights: half-…
cheap encounters
cheap is neither … nor …
sleep; free; expensive
“And sawdust restaurants with oyster shells:”
sawdust: half-….
restaurant serves …, but these are … oysters
inexpensive restaurants, not a lot of …/… spent
cleaning; oysters; half; time; money
“streets that follow like a tedious argument/Of insidious intent”
tedious: a kind of … that makes you …
insidious: … on purpose
blocks are purposefully …
boring; angry; evil; aggressive
“To lead you to an overwhelming question…/Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’”
there are some places that make it hard to be a …
J. giving …of a … –> there is a question but he doesn’t want you to ask what is it
thinking person; half; conversation
“Let us go and make our visit.”
3rd “let’s go”
J. being … but also …
pushy; changing subject
“In the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo.”
sounds like a …, subject matter is strange especially for its …
Michelangelo relates to …–> both are … artists
In each of the circles of Hell, Dante sees really smart people doing things repetitively
Michelangelo was an Italian … and …
repetition–> things we love are no longer …, … is …
nursery rhyme; repetition; Dante; Renaissance; poet; artist; surprising; joy; diminished
Michelangelo said: “I live in … and …. its …”
even greatest maker can feel
Hell; paint; images; tedium
“The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,”
yellow fog relates to … which emitted …
this poem is deeply …–> none of the stanzas have … to them
yellow mustard gas; yellow smoke; fragmented; continuity
“The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,”
muzzle: leather strap that
covers mouth of animals
“Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,/Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,”
fog is … and … like a … –> …
linger: to …
rising; falling; mushroom cloud; bombs; stay
“Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,/ Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,/ And seeing that it was a soft October night,/ Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.”
fog seems … and …
idea that war was … –> coming for you
these lines give the image of a …
acrobatic; sentient; right outside your window; cat
“And indeed there will be time/ For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,”
we make time for
war
“Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;/ There will be time, there will be time”
there will be time for
time
“to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet”
thinking about people as just
…: when a part represents a …
faces; synecdoche; whole
“There will be time to murder and create,”
the positioning of these two words are … to each other, we have time to contribute and … or …/…/…/… things
antithetical; make things; consume; devour; destroy; murder
“And time for all the works and days of hands/ That lift and drop a question on your plate;”
How much time do you spend analyzing your … - do you interact with the world/find yourself in the moment(not considering the implications)
place in the world
“Time for you and time for me,”
you don’t know how much time you or others …, but know that the difference in ages have unequal …
when we don’t need time we …, when we need it we … about it too much, and when we think about it we do so in terms of …
we are … of time
have; ages; waste it; worry; ourselves; afraid
this poem is anti-… takes .. things instead of …
Frankenstein; apart; putting them together
“And time yet for a hundred indecisions”
we spend time not knowing how to spend our time
people are … and don’t know or care what they want or what they want to do
indecisive
“And for a hundred visions and revisions”
we spend much our life making … and much of it … or …
decisions; unmaking these decisions; breaking down
“Before the taking of a toast and tea”
written in 1911, tea was a … thing that happened … a day- strange and …
we … the …
regulated; twice; ritualized; ritualize; wasting of time
“In the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo” (after toast and tea)
there is time for …
time for … and …
repetition is its own form of …
repetition; deja vu; memories; torture
“And indeed there will be time/ To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and ‘Do I dare?”
There is repetition of talking about time in the poem. the phrase is not … but we do have “do I dare” moments
contemporary
“Time to turn back and descend the stair”
physical representation of …, just about to do something and then turn around
indecision
“With a bald spot in the middle of my hair”
representation of …, bald spot relates to …, precedes …, …, etc
passing of time; middle age; decay; oldness
(They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’)
fearing decisiveness for how it affects our …/what people think
reputations
“My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin”
comes a time when nothing you do can
hide your mortality
“My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin”
pin: … –> stops the two pieces of the tie from …
tie tack; separating
(They will say: ‘But how his arms and legs are thin!)
feels like his body is open to …, will not be …
ridicule; accepted
“Do I dare/ Disturb the universe?/ In a minute there is time/ For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.”
this is one of the … questions;
there is nothing you can do in a minute that cannot be … in another …
overwhelming; undone; minute
“For I have known them all already, known them all:/ Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,”
Eliot is … and … time
Wordsworth: “we come to Earth trailing …” –> referencing memory of
fracturing; re-assembling; clouds of glory; pre-existence
pre-existence –> life—< afterlife
pre-existence: nobody, as close to … as you hopefully will be when you die; used this to explain why children have …, children have .. of what it was like in …
in life, we lose … of …
God; special quality; primordial memory; heaven; glory; pre-existence
“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”
coffee relates to …
quantifying life by different means
energy
“I know the voices dying with a dying fall/ Beneath the music from a farther room/ So how should I presume?”
this is one of the … of this poem
overwhelming questions
“And I have known the eyes already, known them all–/ The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase”
… people
categorizing
“And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,” pin: thing that keeps his necktie together is pinning his …
imaginging that he has a pin through himself (like a …); people fix him in place and …
entire body; butterfly collection; define who he is
“When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall”
like an …, if you put him under a microscope, you would see how he is …–> doesn’t want to be …
insect; wriggling; found out
“The how should I begin/ To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?/ And how should I presume?”
Eliot is trying to show all the things that are …, including …
he is … the … as well
fractured; human interaction; fracturing; body
“And I have known the arms already, known them all” another fracturing of the
body
“Arms that are braceleted and white and bare”
this is a
white female
“(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)/ Is it perfume from a dress/ That makes me so digress?”
people spend a lot of time on the idea of …
if i wasn’t so easily distracted by love, what would happen?
romance
“Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl./ And should I then presume?/ And how should I begin?”
the human body continues to be …,
the arms are women’s arms and Prufrock is taking it as a symbol of
fragmented; femininity
prufrock scared of being … by women
examined
James Merryl—> poet dying of …, wrote poem about human body and asked us to examine the word body and look at the word as its own …, not as …
body; letters
“Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets/And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes/ Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…”
prufrock fears being … and notices that he has the opportunity to be with … and is thinking of what ot …
he sees a man looking down on him and the man sees …
his fear of being alone is why he’s on the date
alone; someone; to say to them; loneliness;
“I should have been a pair of ragged claws/ Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”
he realizes that his honest self is … and … and if he ever got the chance ot speak to someone, he would say he is … he says he shouldn’t be with anyone because he would respond in …
i should’ve been born at the bottom of the ocean as a pair of claws bc then i wouldn’t have to tlak about why I’m scared of loneliness
prufrock exists as a …
pitiful; despicable; lonely; loneliness; warning
“And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!/ Smoothed by long fingers,/ Asleep…tired…or it malingers,/ Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me./ Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,/ Have the strength to form the moment to its crisis?”
time … itself, making it seem like its passage is not …
“forcing the moment to crisis” –> if something is going at its own pace, we don’t like to go into … that are important
prufrock is the monster that is warning and instructing. he is telling us to put a moment to its … and is informing us that the idea that time isn’t passing is an …
disguises; a big deal; propositions; crisis; illusion
“But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,/ Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,/ I am no prophet–and here’s no great matter;”
compares himself to …, that he would see his head growing baldn and yet will still have his .., although it isn’t a large matter
one of the women he forced the moment with would wwant his head on platter like …
John the Baptist; prophecy; John the Baptist
“I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker/ And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,/ And in short, I was afraid.”
when a candle flickers, there is too much. …
footman: …
good things … and we do not get a …
time passing was a pleasant thing, but now he’s afraid
eternal footman is the …
oxygen; butler; pass; second chance; servant to death
“And would it have been worth it, after all,/ After the cups, the marmalade, the tea”
… in life
Lazarus: Jesus’s friend who died .. days after Christ and then comes back …
2nd lazarus: poor guy who only eats drops on floor. Lazarus ends up in … and rich guy in …
death; 4; to life; heaven; hell
“Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,/ Would it have been worth while,/ To have bitten off the matter with a smile,/ To have squeezed the universe into a ball/ To roll it towards some overwhelming question,/ To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,/ Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all’–/ If one, settling a pillow by her head/ Should say: “that is not what I meant at all;/ That is not it, at all.”
Prufrock imagines that he says something to make a romantic encounter. afraid that the other person may not feel the same
“that is not what i meant at all..” is her answer after …
turning Prufrock down
“And would it have been worth it, after all,/ Would it have been worthwhile,/ After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,/ After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor–/ And this, and so much more?–/ It is impossible to say just what I mean!”
would it be worthwhile after all to
say what I mean
“But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:/ Would it have been worth while/ If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl/ And turning toward the window, should say:/ ‘That is not it at all,/ That is not what I meant, at all.”
allegory of a cave by Plato: seeing the truth for ourselves by
breaking your chain
death in life: to get up and not …
disturb the universe/force a moment to its crisis
allegory of plato: we are in a cave, chained, and we see the shadows on the wall of the cave as …
but the shadow comes from a man standing at the top, and though we perceive him to be much bigger, he really isn’t, and the only one who knows that is him
the only way to know truth is to break your chains and become that man at the top, even though it’s disappointing
breaking the chain is …
reality; disturbing the universe
“No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be,/ Am an attendant lord, one that will do/ To swell a progress, start a scene or two,/ Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,/ Deferential, glad to be of use,/ Politic, cautious, and meticulous;/ Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;/ At times, indeed, almost ridiculous– Almost, at times, the Fool.”
Although Prufrock is, in many ways, like Hamlet (they both think a lot), Prufrock isn’t him–because he has died in life he is no longer the … of his …
main character; story; fool; attendant lord
“I grow old… I grow old…/ I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled./ Shall I part my hair behind? Do I deare to eat a peach?”
Do I dare to eat a peach– old people contemplate doing things because at their age it may be considered … for them to do it
inappropriate
“I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach./ I have hard the mermaids singing, each to each./ I do not think that they will sing to me.”
…: Greek mermaids–it is their job to sing to people, to lure them out of their boats and toward them, if people can resist their songs, the mermaids must then …
even though these mermaids sing to everyone, and are supposed to sing they don’t bother singing to Prufrock–shows how worthless he feels
Sirens; drown themselves
“I have seen them riding seaward on the waves/Combing the white hair of the waves blown back/ When the wind blows the water white and black./ We have lingered in the chambers of the sea./ By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown/ Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”
…: Irish mermaids, they kidnap people and put spells on them and keep them in chambers in the deep sea. The only way to escape is if … and when that happens, they face the challenge of making it to the top without drowning
Prufrock …, just like he’s …
Selki; you hear a human voice; drowns; drowning in his own thoughts
