Urban Decay

Question 1

“And newspapers from vacant lots”

Answer 1

Literary Device / Technique:

• End Stop
• Eliot inserts a semi colon to force the reader to stop and consider

Link to theme / effect
- Newspapers are meant to provide a sense of objective truth in a changing world

• The certainties of the modern world are based on papers that record the sensational and the passing, and that are discarded to litter the vacant lots

Question 2

“The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes”

Answer 2

Literary Device / Technique:

• Personification: the fog is a sentient being that seeps into all aspects of modernity
• Demonstrates the influence of the French symbolists, from whom Eliot takes his eye for anti-aesthetic detail

Link to theme / effect:

• The fog underlies the feeling of loneliness and decay of the poem
• The fog obscures the reality of the modern world, and the ugliness that lies beneath the surface

Question 3

“Remark that cat that flattens itself in the gutter, slips out its tongue and devours a morsel of rancid butter”

Answer 3

Literary Device / Technique:

• Animal Imagery
• As nocturnal animals, cats symbolise darkness and the unconscious

Link to theme / effect

• Eliot views the modern city as encouraging a society of scavengers
• He notes the irony that what he fruits of urban society are detrimental, like the rancid butter

Question 4

“And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly”

“And the villages dirty and charging high prices”

Answer 4

Literary Device / Technique:

• Repetition
• Creates a sense of monotony across all places where the Magi stopped

Link to theme / effect

• Towns and cities are supposed to be places where people gather in community
• However, the hostile attitude of the townspeople suggest that this original mission has been lost in the modern world