Preludes
Prelude 1 is an account of which time of day in the urban metropolis?
Prelude 1 is an account of the city as its workers settle into the sordid ordinariness of their evening.
How is machinery used to represent/symbolise the modern man in 'Rhapsody'?
The 'divisions and precisions' of a clock / men inhabit the city like a "broken spring in a factory yard" / a woman's eye twists like a "crooked pin,"- her vision distorted.
Prufrock's life is one of inaction. Provide a quote which pointedly references this idea:
*Do I dare, do I dare
*the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table’
*I have measured out my life with coffee spoons
What thought most disturbed Eliot about modern (that is 1926) meaninglessness?
If you had no engagement with a God (Christian or otherwise) then you couldn’t be damned to hell – nor could you be sent to heaven; a thought disturbing to Eliot as damnation seemed preferable to modern meaninglessness.
Who narrates the poem, 'Journey of the Magi'?
One of the 'Three Wise Men' narrates the journey. However the trip to the Christ-child happens backwards through time; past the scene of suffering at the crucifixion ("three trees on the low sky"), to the betrayal of Christ ('pieces of silver') to the baby at Bethlehem ('There was a Birth').
Eliot wrote the first two Preludes prior to going to Europe. He wrote them while attending university in the USA. Where and when was this?
Eliot attended Harvard for his undergraduate degree from 1906-1910.
What is the moon personified to represent? (Bonus if you can add a quote or two)
The moon is a deranged, diseased, decadent goddess of modernity who becomes an iconic version of the sordid nature of the modern world. It is not made clear whether the flaneur falls under the spell and participates in the 'dark side' of street life.
The poem is a pastiche (an imitation of works of another artist or period) of traditional poetic forms in a way that breaks traditional boundaries. What three styles are combined?
The ode & The dramatic monologue & The Shakespearean soliloquy
Who are the ignave in Dante's 'Inferno' and how are they referenced in the 'Hollow Men'?
The ignave are ‘the slothful’, the souls who were so spiritually incompetent they can't get to hell or heaven. They are made of straw, like the effigies burnt on bonfire night (They worship the superficial, the glamorous.)
How is the landscape a metaphor for spiritual barrenness?
'The ways deep and the weather sharp, / The very dead of winter' presents sensory severity (“deep,” “sharp,” “dead”) the Magi move through a world that mirrors modern alienation—life felt as effort without warmth.
What time of day is examined in Prelude 2?
Prelude 2 an account of the working-class city dwellers waking in the morning to commence another day.
How do street lamps function in 'Rhapsody'?
The street lamps mark the time (as they did in Preludes). They are also personified to narrate (judge?) the flaneur's wanderings: “The street lamp sputtered the street lamp muttered the street lamp said”.
What two identities does Prufrock embody?
In the poem, Prufrock has a double identity, part gentleman of high culture, part a flaneur of the sordid working class of the city.
The paradox between idealism and savage corruption are preferable, according to Eliot, than indifference and equivocation. How is this intertextualised in the poem?
‘Mistah Kurtz - he dead' ( an idealist who turned rogue in Joseph Conrad's ‘Heart of Darkness’.
•‘A penny for the Old Guy’- the anti-establishment act of trying to blow up Parliament in the name of religious belief is preferable to 'the world ends/
Not with a bang but a whimper.'
How does 'Magi' fit into Eliot's body of work?
The poem fits into his overarching body of work by serving as the bridge between his earlier secular and later religious phases.
Provide three quotes (can be just two words each) which describe the urban squalor:
”burnt-out ends” / ”broken blinds” / “muddy feet” / “dingy shades” etc.
Provide a quote where visual or olfactory imagery links furtive actions to present man's moral decay.
•Visual: theft (e.g. a cat...Slips out its tongue / And devours a morsel of rancid butter/ So the hand of the child, automatic, / Slipped out and pocketed a toy.
•Olfactory: temptation 'old nocturnal smells..And female smells in shuttered rooms,/And cigarettes in corridors/ And cocktail smells in bars.'
Prufrock invites 'you' to accompany him on an evening walk through the streets of a city like Paris. What 3 distinct moments are related?
•The initial streets are in the poorer or bohemian areas of the city, a place of ‘restless nights in one-night cheap hotels’
•We visit a party, where polite conversation is made, yet there is a failure to connect
•Prufrock heads home alone, as not even the mermaids (of the streets) felt him worthy enough to seduce.
Present analysis of either the symbol of the eyes or the star.
The sightlessness of the Hollow Men is a symbol for their moral blindness (Matthew 6:22 22“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, 23but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.)
•In ‘The Hollow Men’ the star first appears as a 'fading star' (despair, lack of hope) Then a dying star, Lastly 'perpetual' –alive, eternal, there is hope and salvation.
Eliot suggests the narrator experiences existential alienation not only during, but after, the journey. Provide 2 quotes as supporting evidence.
'The ways deep and the weather sharp' / 'with the voices singing in our ears, saying - That this was all folly' / 'his Birth was - Hard and bitter agony for us” / 'We returned to our places… but no longer at ease here.'
Provide 3 examples of metonymy or synedoche which represent the people of the city:
“muddy feet” / “Hands/That are raising dingy shades” / “Short square fingers stuffing pipes” / “palms of both soiled hands”
How does the poem reflect a figurative, but ironic ‘rhapsody’?
Uses the musical concept of an irregular, free-flowing composition by acting as a stream-of-consciousness montage. Fragmented images combine to evoke dreamlike / nightmare-like experiences and thought. The wildly passionate musical rhapsody is ironically subverted to describe unrealised passion.
Prufrock has an extreme awareness of himself as an actor of roles, he sees himself as performing in a masquerade when he goes out. Provide three moments in the poem which suggest this:
He 'prepares a face to meet the faces that you meet' / He exists in hell (Dante) / He rises like Lazarus / He is sacrificed like John the Baptist / He equivocates like Hamlet / He Is tempted by the mermaids / sirens but is not worthy of their seduction.
Everything in this poem is circular and repetitive, symbolised by the group of children dancing and singing around what?
A prickly pear (a cactus) – a non-fertile fallic symbol, to represent Eliot's rejection of sexuality.
How does the poem represent Eliot's journey of faith?
'A hard time we had of it' implies the Magi's journey was arduous. They left behind 'summer palaces on slopes' / 'silken girls bringing sherbet' / 'liquor and women' — Eliot's way to show that spiritual transformation is a harsh departure from worldly luxury.