Essay on T.S. Eliot - 704 Words

T.S. Eliot T.S. Eliot is said to be one of the most influential modernist poets of our time. His poetry, although very complex is the subject of literary classes and discussions around the world. His poems â€Å"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock† and â€Å"The Waste Land† are not only alike in his literary style, but also share the same theme of unsuccessful male and female relationships. Eliot experienced a very unsuccessful relationship with the opposite sex when he was married to a drug-addicted mental patient for several years. In each poem Eliot makes a special point to show unsuccessful male-female relationships as an important theme. He does this in both poems to show how utterly isolated people are in the twentieth century.†¦show more content†¦During these tense situations with the female gender, Eliot has Prufrock thinking only about his insufficiencies: â€Å"Time to turn back and descend the Stair,/With a bald spot in the middle of my hairâ € (Prufrock 40-42). Prufrock also is constantly listening to other people, especially women, talk about his inadequacies: â€Å"They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!†(Prufrock 43), â€Å"They will say: ‘But how his arms and legs are thin!’†(Prufrock 45). Eliot is showing the reader that men and women are simply not connecting the way they should be. In this post WWI society men and women are isolated from one another and unable to form a relationship where true love is the focus. As a man Prufrock is very pathetic and lonely. The fact that Prufrock has â€Å"measured out [his] life with coffee spoons†(Prufrock 52) shows that in Eliot’s view of society, men are pathetic and lack the moral values to create successful relationships with women. Through Prufrock Eliot expresses his hopeless, pessimistic view of man,s condition in the first half of the twentieth century. His characters are totally isolated and find no comfor t in love and companionship and are unable to find any true meaning to life. They are as mindless as â€Å"a pair of ragged claws/ Scuttling across the floors of silent seas†(Prufrock 73-4). The relationships between menShow MoreRelatedThe Wasteland by T.S. Eliot1017 Words   |  4 PagesT.S. Eliot’s most famous poem â€Å"The Wasteland,† a grim picture of post-war London is analyzed as being the most important poetic work of the twentieth century. The first glance at this poem leads one to the conclusion that the content of this piece is bleak and depressing. The assumption can be made that Eliot has diagnosed his society with a terminal disease, which he chooses to describe through his poem. After further analyzing â€Å"The Wasteland† it can be seen that out of the dust of this barren placeRead More T.s. Eliot Essay1241 Words   |  5 Pagesinfluence on writers for the century to come. Born in 1888 in St. Louis Mo. at the tail end of the quot;Cowboy eraquot; he grew up in the more civilized industrial era of the early 20th century, a time of the Wright Brothers and Henry Ford. The Eliot family was endowed with some of the best intellectual and political connections in America of that time, and as a result went to only the best schools. By 1906 he was a freshman in Harvard, finishing his bachelors in only 3 years and studying philosophyRead MoreT.S Eliot2104 Words   |  9 PagesEliots attitude was reflected in his work. A quote from T. S. Eliot: The Man and His Work states, Eliot was a man with the highest standards in his poetry, his critisism, and his behavior to others. ( Spender 34). Perhaps much of this can be attributed to his birth toward the end of the Victorian Era. Eliots background also had a major effect on his writing style. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 26, 1888. Though Eliot was born in America, he spent much of his life in England. AlthoughRead MoreThe Wasteland, by T.S. Eliot857 Words   |  4 Pagestwentieth century, T.S. Eliot transformed the traditional poetry form into a more modern style. Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri on September 26, 1888. At the age of 25, Eliot moved to England where he began his career as a poet. Eliot greatly attracted the modernist movement, which was poetry written in the reaction of Victorian poetry. His first poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, was known as one of the most famous pieces of the Modernist movement. In his poetry, Eliot combines themesRead MoreEssay T.S. Eliot and Modernism931 Words   |  4 Pagestwentieth century produced works of poetry and prose which were unique to the form. The writing style of modernism was unprecedented and reflective of the socio-political events of the period. T.S Eliot was a pre-eminent figure in modernism publishing many important works of prose and poetry in his lifetime. â€Å"Eliot forged a style of aggressively fragmentary, urban poetry, full of indelicate, ‘unpoetic’ images and diction† (OXFORD BRITLIT) Eliot’s â€Å"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock† is a poem that fullyRead MoreThe Wasteland by T.S. Eliot Essay558 Words   |   3 PagesThe Wasteland by T.S. Eliot In the poem, The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot gives a primarily positive connotation by using the theme of speech, language, and failure of speech. In each of the sections, Eliot shows how speech and communication are important in life. He also shows that speech cannot always accomplish what actions can. The way the characters in the poem use speech show that speech and communication are important. A Game of Chess This section may be the best example of communicationRead More Gerontion by T.S. Eliot Essay1629 Words   |  7 PagesNature: Effects of Revision in Gerontion After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, Guides us by vanities. These lines from T.S. Eliots Gerontion (1429, 34-37) appear in the final version of the poem, published in 1920. The speaker of this dramatic monologue is an old man sitting inside a â€Å"decayed house.† The reference to knowledge invokes the original sin of Adam and EveRead MoreEssay on T.s. Eliot And Society1454 Words   |  6 Pagesdaily lives to find greater reasoning. T.S. Eliot is considered to be one of the most prominent poets and playwrights of his time and his works are said to have promoted to â€Å"reshape modern literature† (World Book). He was born in 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri and studied at Harvard and Oxford. It was at Harvard where he met his guide and mentor Ezra Pound, a well-known modernist poet. Pound encouraged Eliot to expand his writing abilities and publish his work. Eliot became an England citizen in 1925 andRead MoreT.S. Eliot the Wasteland Essay1371 Words   |  6 Pages Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men, Or with his nails hell dig it up again! You! Hypocrite lecteur! – mon semblable, - mon frà ¨re! T.S. Eliot, â€Å"The Burial of the Dead†, The Waste Land, lines 60-76. T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is a Modernist piece of literature. Combining â€Å"traditional content† and radical style, Eliot has captured the tension between past and present. For him, the past is at once nostalgic, yet responsible for the present shared post-war â€Å"sense of desolationRead MoreWilliam Wordsworth and T.S. Eliot814 Words   |  4 PagesWilliam Wordsworth and T.S. Eliot are both excellent and admirable poets from different time periods that have very distinct views on what it means to be a true poet. On one hand Wordsworth strived to be unique, romantic and sentimental in a time where people needed a poet as such. On the other hand, Eliot lived in a time where romanticism and sentimentalism did not satisfy readers that needed something less elevated and more realistic. Although they had opposing views neither is right or wrong and