Question

What kind of language does T. S. Eliot use in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to describe the city, and how do these descriptions reflect modernist themes? Cite examples from the poem to support your position in approximately 150 words.

Answer 1

When explaining what kind of language does, T. S. Eliot uses in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to describe the city and how these descriptions reflect modernist themes, one must first have the knowledge of what these modernist themes are. To sum up, what modernist themes are: modernist themes most commonly explore alienation, transformation, consumption, and the relativity of truth.

Now that that is understood, we can say that the city’s description reflects modern themes in the sense that it often questions whether there is a meaning of life or not. It also creates a sense of isolation, which creates an environment of despair and loss, which is a characteristic of modernism.

The paralysis theme is supported by an image in the first stanza of the poem:

“Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table”

Here in which the night sky of London is likened to a patient etherized on a table. This sense of being drugged and passive will follow Prufrock throughout the poem.

Answer 2

In the poem "the love song of J.Alfred Prufrock" T.S Elliot uses an urban setting and expresses in his style an experimental nature. Descriptions like the city is full of "yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes" and  "It lingers on pools of water in the streets and is covered in soot that falls from chimneys. There descriptions make part of the modernism since modernism usually rejects romanticism and therefore the nature as a setting