T.S.

Eliot
“Eliot with his high charged microscopic insight portrays the graphic picture of a
despaired generation, the smell of war ridden soil, a state of psychological
insurgency and the monotony and futility of modern civilization and they are the
images of imperial catastrophe.” -Vikramaditya Rai
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:
Imagery & Symbolism:
Symbols and images reflect the mood of modern city-dweller:
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a symbolic poem which gives
the mood of the modern city-dweller. It expresses the barrenness, the
mental tension, the frustration and the irresolution of the modern man.
Eliot depicts the mind of the modern man and the frustration of modern
civilization through images and symbols which are mainly functional,
precise and compact. He has drawn, largely on the works of English
metaphysical poets and the French Symbolist poets. He has combined
their practice in such a way that his technique becomes quite original.
The first line of the poem is an invitation to the beloved to go out with
him in the evening. The mental condition of Prufrock is symbolized by a
patient who has been given a medicine to render him unconscious for the
operation which is to follow. The patient is in a peculiar state of mind -
he is conscious but conscious of nothing. Such is the condition of the
mind of Prufrock, the lover who has invited his beloved for an evening
together. As Prufrock goes to the streets which seem to be numerous, the
poet uses another symbol to show the large number of streets which
Prufrock has to walk through. The unending streets follow one another
like the chain of a long argument. The poet here finds resemblance
which is apparently unlike but the symbol shows boredom of Prufrock.
Images of living creatures:
The spreading fog of the October evening resembles a cat who is lazily
going about. The fog also reflects the state of mind of Prufrock. Like
the fog Prufrock's mind is lazy and wants some excuse for postponement
of his decisions regarding the proposal. The fog also represents the dirty
and unhealthy physical environment of city life. Prufrock wishes at the
back of his mind to shut the responsibilities of life. Prufrock compares
himself to a pair of ragged claws in the sea- (L.73). He would like to
run away from the harsh realities of life and take refuge as a kind of
fish in the bed of the sea. Thirdly, Eliot realizes his importance and
helplessness under the compulsion of a modern world and compares
himself to a worm fixed against a wall with a pin.
Images of death-wish:
Prufrock's death wish for the suicidal propensity of the modern man is
evident in different parts of the poem. The poet has used various images
to reveal the idea, for example "pinned on the wall" L. 58; "The floors of
the silent seas" L. 74; "The eternal footman" means death" L. 85;
"chambers of the sea", L. 129; "We drown", L. 131 and "Tam Lazarus"
L. 94.
Sea-images:
Eliot is fond of images of nature particularly the sea. He scatters the
floors of restaurant with oyster sea-shell (L. 7). He refers to himself as a
kind of fish in the sea (L. 74). At the end of the poem, he refers to the
beach where he has heard the song of mermaids. He has seen them
riding on the sea-waves and combing to whole hair of the waves like the
combing of a lady's hair. The sea-image can also represent the mind of
Prufrock which is swept by stormy waves, and which cannot be
fathomed.
Literary-images:
The greatest satisfaction to a literary reader is given by the literary
images in The Song of Prufrock. There are three allusions in the poem-
Lazarus, Prince Hamlet and John the Baptist. Besides this, the Epigraph
given at the top, from Dante's Inferno, signifies that the world of
Prufrock is a kind of hell and he is a denizen of hell. This situation is
reiterated by reference to Lazarus. Lazarus was brought back to life
after his death by Christ. Prufrock says: "I am Lazarus, come from the
hell to tell you all." He thinks of himself as one who has been living in
the world of dead. The contemporary world is a world of dead men i.e.
those who are spiritually dead. The second literary allusion is to Prince
Hamlet. Prufrock save: "No, I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to
be." Prufrock is both ike Hamlet and unlike Hamlet. He is indecisive and
tense like Hamlet. But he is unlike Hamlet as he has no sense of
responsibility and he does not want to take any action. Hamlet felt a sort
of moral obligation to fight the wrong done to him. Therefore, Prufrock
said that he is not Hamlet but rather Polonius and an old gossipy in a
factual character.
The third literary allusion is the story of John the Baptist. He
condemned King Herod for taking away his brother's life. Baptist was
killed by Salome and she brought his head to King Herod Hence,
Prufrock says that he is not like John the Baptist, prepared to meet a
martyr's death. John lived for a purpose and died fora cause whereas
Prufrock wishes to die because he finds no purpose in living. As the poet
remarks:
"Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald)
brought in upon a platter.
I am no prophet-and here's no great matter;"
These images reveal the inner state of mind of Prufrock, which is full of
conflicting thoughts and feelings.
‘The Hollow Men’: Symbolism:
T. S. Eliot uses a tight and interrelated group of symbols,
including deserts, rats, twilight, fading stars, and the hollow/stuffed
men themselves, to summon a decaying civilization, usually interpreted
as representing Europe after the end of the First World War.
Straw men:
The Hollow Men/Stuffed men signify modern men who are spiritually
dead. Examples:
The second epigraph: the “old guy” refers to a straw effigy of Guy
Fawkes, which will be burnt in a ritual.
Lines 1-4 and 17-18: Presents straw men as a paradox, both empty and
full, present but meaningless. Straw has the quality of once having been
alive, but now being dead and dry.
Lines 32-35: The “crossed staves” have several connotations: wooden
planks of support for the exhausted hollow men, a crucifix, and in an
alternate word meaning, the lines of poetry.
Dryness/Desert (Motif):
The dry landscape represents a world that once had life or faith, in the
figure of water, but it has disappeared.
Examples:
Lines 5-8 The repetition of “dry” three times implies a lack of water or
life.
Lines 9-10 Two similes imagine a world which has lost its fecundity:
“wind in dry grass” and “rat’s feet over broken glass in our dry
cellar.”
Lines 39-40: “This is the dead land/This is the cactus land.”: A cactus is
a living plant that grows in the desert. So the land is not entirely dead.
These lines can be read as a dialectic, a vacillation: This is the dead land:
Faith is gone, so this land is dead. Or, this is the cactus land: We are still
living—but barely, within harsh arid conditions.
Lines 68-71: The Hollow Men alter the children's song "Here we go
'round the Mulberry Bush" to "Here we go round the prickly pear." The
prickly pear is a kind of cactus that grows in a desert, representing the
barest amount of life.
The Shadow (symbol):
Lines 72-90: The Shadow, repeated in a refrain, is a symbol of death.
Without the comfort of faith in God, death paralyzes all action. In lines
76, 82, and 90, the speaker announces that “the Shadow” “falls.” As the
speaker describes it, “the Shadow” interrupts a series of key things. For
instance, it cuts off an “emotion” from a “response.” In other words, “the
Shadow” makes it difficult for the hollow men to act on their emotions,
or to move from having an “idea” and making it a “reality.” The speaker
never explains what the “Shadow” is, but its symbolic characteristics
give the reader some ideas. The shadow might symbolize fear, anxiety,
or even death itself. These forces, the speaker suggest, cut off cause and
effect, leading to a universe where nothing works right.
Eyes (Motif):
Eyes symbolize moral certainty and judgment.
Examples:
Line 14: “Those who have crossed/With direct eyes, to death’s other
kingdom.” refers to Canto 3 of Dante's Inferno as well as Ancient Greek
mythology, where death is figured as a passage across the River Styx.
The poem sets up a contrast between the hollow men and those who
have crossed with direct eyes. These are ancestors who have, through
faith, crossed into “death’s other kingdom”: heaven.
Line 19: “Let me be no nearer” expresses apprehension of being closer
to the eyes, or judgment. It’s a plea to be no nearer than the faded
suggestion of the ancestor’s world of faith and moral clarity.
Lines 22-23: In dreams, the eyes of the dead are figured as sunlight on a
broken column. The sunlight, bright and direct, represents an
unwavering truth.
Lines 61-62: “The eyes are not here,/There are no eyes here.” If there are
no eyes there, that means that the hollow men are blind.
Lines 63-64: “Sightless, unless/The eyes reappear/As the perpetual
star,/Multifoliate rose/Of death’s twilight kingdom.” The eyes of faith
might reappear as the perpetual star—the star over Bethlehem, the star
of the Christian faith. This means that religion gives us ‘eyes’ in the
sense that it can provide people with a deeper spiritual knowledge of the
world, and thus they feel ‘awakened’ or ‘enlightened’ by it.
Death:
‘The Hollow Men’ is a poem about death, or living death, over life and
living. In this respect, too, it picks up where The Waste Land had left
off. The word ‘death’ itself occurs five times in the poem. Images of
rats invoke disease, plague, and decay pervade the early portions of the
poem, stars are ‘dying’, and the ‘tumid river’ summons the River Styx in
the Underworld of classical mythology, across which the dead were
ferried to their final resting place. At the same time, as the fifth section
reminds us, ‘Life is very long’ (a quotation lifted from a lesser Conrad
novel, An Outcast of the Islands). And this concluding part of the poem
is haunted not by death but by life: ‘conception’, ‘creation’, ‘existence’,
and ‘life’ all suggest the making of new life, or bringing life into the
world, rather than death.
Multifoliate Rose:
The ‘multifoliate rose’, an image Eliot borrowed from the medieval poet
Dante (1265-1321), is a symbol of the Virgin Mary: the hollow men
imply that they will only regain their sight with the help of Christianity.
Twilight:
‘The Hollow Men’ is a poem about intermediary stages: ‘between’ is a
key word in the poem, especially in the fifth and final section. Eliot
twice describes the land inhabited by the hollow men as a ‘twilight
kingdom’. ‘Twilight’ can refer to both dawn and dusk: the two times of
day between daylight and night-time. And certainly, the hollow men are
active at dawn, as their five o’clock perambulations around the prickly
pear show.
Rat's Coat:
In lines 32-33, the speaker describes himself wearing a series of
“deliberate disguises,” including a “Rat’s coat.” In other words, he is
wearing rat’s fur—or perhaps he is simply dressed up as a rat. Since rats
often carry diseases and spread them to human beings, the rats serve
here as symbols for disease itself. In describing himself as wearing a
“rat’s coat,” the speaker thus treats himself as a carrier of disease:
indeed, he is an embodiment of illness and sickness. The speaker thus
understands himself as contagious: his desperate spiritual condition
might spread to the people around him. As a "hollow man," he is
someone who endangers others' health and well-being.
Crow skin:
After the speaker describes himself wearing a “Rat’s coat” as one of his
“deliberate disguises,” he adds another disguise: “crowskin.” The rat is a
symbol of disease; the crow takes things further. It is a traditional
symbol of death. In other words, by wearing “crowskin,” the speaker
makes himself into a symbol of death. And once again, the speaker
subtly insists that he is a danger to human communities: that he brings
not only sickness, but also death.
Allusions:
 First Epigraph: The first epigraph is a quotation from Joseph
Conrad's novel about Western imperialism, Heart of Darkness. In
T.S. Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men," the phrase "Mistah Kurtz, he
 dead" is used as an allusion to the character Kurtz and the themes
of darkness, corruption, and the human condition explored in
"Heart of Darkness." The phrase is used to suggest the emptiness
and futility of life, and to symbolize the death of hope and
meaning. The allusion underscores the theme of spiritual and
emotional decay that pervades the poem and contributes to its
sense of despair and hopelessness. Elliot did not wanted people to
end up like Kurtz, greedy, hollow and eventually dead.
 Second Epigraph: The second epigraph is a version of an
expression used by English school kids to ask for money to buy
fireworks to blow up straw dolls the represent the traitor Guy
Fawkes. The "Old Guy" may also represent Charon, the ferryman
who would take souls across the Acheron into the realm of death if
you gave him a coin.
 Lines 15-16: In Canto 3 of Dante's Inferno, a large group of soul's
has been excluded from Hell because they were not "lost" or
"violent" enough. They can't take sides in the battle between Good
and Evil. We know from other poems like The Waste Land that
this canto really resonated with Eliot.
 Line 60: The river is most likely Acheron, a branch of the mythical
River Styx. Acheron and the ferryman Charon also appear in Canto
3 of Dante's Inferno.
 Lines 68-71: The italicized song lyrics are a variation of the
children's ditty, "Here we go round the Mulberry Bush."
 Line 77: "For Thine is the Kingdom" alludes to the ending of the
Lord's Prayer, sometimes known as the "Our Father." The full
ending goes: "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the
glory, for ever."
 Lines 95-98: The end of the poem modifies a different part of the
"Mulberry Bush" song.
 The Waste Land (burial of the dead):
Symbols and Allusions in First Section "The Burial Of The Dead":
In literature, April is consider the month of rebirth or regeneration
but for waste-Landers April is the cruelest month as they are not will to
revive. In line 20 "son of man” symbolizes the Holy Christ. In line 22
"heap of broken images" symbolizes loss of spiritual values in the
modern man. In line 23 "dead tree" symbolizes complete barrenness
of modern civilization. In line 25 "red rock" symbolises Christian
Church. In lines 35, 36 and 37 "Hyacinth" is a plant which is a symbol
of sensuous love. In line 52 "one-eyed merchant” symbolizes the
modern man whose commerce eye is opened but religious eye is
closed. In line 60 "Unreal City" symbolizes London city, this is also
an allusion taken from Baudlaire’s poem in which this phrase refers
to Paris. Line 62, "A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many," is
parallel to Dante's line in Inferno. Line 64, "Sighs, short and infrequent,
were exhaled," is allusion from Dante's Divine Comedy.
Line 68, "with a dead sound on the final stroke of nine" is a allusion
towards the boring mechanical life of waste landers and "final stroke of
nine" symbolises the death time of Christ. There is another allusion from
the opera of Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde in lines 32, 33 and 34
which are:
"Der Heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind
Wo weilest du? "
In line 43 "Madame Sosostris" is an allusion taken from Aldous
Huxley's novel Crome Yellow. Line 48, "Those are pearls that were his
eyes” is an allusion from Shakespeare's play "The Tempest". In line
49 "Belladonna” symbolizes beautiful women, the description of
Belladonna is also an allusion from the paintings of Virgin Mary
by Leonardo De Vinci. In line 61 "brown fog” symbolizes the
barrenness of city life.
Imagery:
The Sybyl:
 Classical reference from Greek Mythology
 She was Aeneas’ guide through the underworld
 Entrapment, Death/Immortality, Desperation, seer
“Lilacs”:
 A male symbol
 Associated with Death (Esp. with President Lincoln’s death)
 Natural and they have connotations of life, nature and peace in
contrast with the idea of deat
 A sense of lament
“Winter kept us warm, covering”:
 Winter = good, covers the earth and keeps what is underneath
warm
 “Covering” suggest the concealment of truth
 Therefore, winter is concealing the truth which is hidden
underneath
 Suggests that Society doesn’t want truth to be revealed, they like
winter
“Breeding” “Mixing” “Stirring” “Feeding”:
 Sexual connotations
 Connotations of growing and birth
 Possibly rebirth of humanity.
  Continuous
 The words are hidden at the end of the line suggesting there is
hope for rebirth, but it is only hinted at the ends of the lines
Natural Imager:
 Flowers, Sunlight, Mountains, Night
 Roots, Branches which are harsh sounding words, that emphasise
negative images of no leaves, no life, desolation
 Rocks, Stones are “Dry” Negative Image > lifeless, dry,
hopelessness. However the “Red rock” possibly suggests Salvation
+ Life
 Water, suggesting life, rebirth, hope
 Seasons, suggesting the cycle of life, continuation, rebirth, hope
for new life
 “April” as the start of the cycle, start of new life and the start of
the Canterbury Tales
o Beginning of a journey
o A group of people from different societies
o Reflects the mix society that is present in the poem
Hyacinths:
 Hope, nature
 Commonly associated with males
 Juxtaposition between a male symbol associated with a girl
(Hyacinth Girl)
 Sexual confusion