T.s eliot quotes notes PDF

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t.s eliot notes...

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Alienation (feeling different from everyone else, isolated) Poem

Technique

Quote

Analysis

Love Song

Imagery

“Of restless nights in onenight cheap hotels”

Not being able to sleep at night because he feels like he doesn’t belong in a community or have any meaning.

The rhythm in this section of the poem mimics the rhythm of a song and has some structure like daily routines do. Simile

“Like a patient etherized upon a table”

He is comparing his life to someone being tied down on a surgical table unable to move or be free.

Kinesthetic Imagery

“We whisper together, quiet and meaningless”

The idea that humanity is without vision and purpose whilst still being insignificant.

Preludes Rhapsody The Hollow Men Journey of the Magi Social anxiety and insecurity (personal shit) Poem

Technique

Quote

Analysis

Love Song

Repetition

“I grow old”

Shows his awareness of aging and his hesitancy to approach his senior years. Prufrock believes that his encounters in life has been unsuccessful as modern society values youth.

Comment

“I do not think they [the mermaids] would sing to me”

Conjures the bleakness of modernity which also shows Prufrock’s demoralised view of himself.

Animal Imagery

“Should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas”

Gives him a wish of wanting to have protection of a hard outer shell, away from the ridicule of others.

Rhetorical Questions

“Shall I part my hair behind?”

He believes that he is an outsider and is trapped outside the social interactions of modern world

Metaphor

“To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet”

Putting on an act for when you meet new people

Rhetorical Question

“They will say: How his hair Addressing first world problems and taking into account he is growing thin! … Do I dare disturb the universe?” might have too much time on his hands which leads to him overthinking he does and the anxiety he develops about simple things such as his hair thinning.

Rhetorical Question

“And when i am formulated, sprawling on a pin, when i am pinned and wriggling on the wall, then how should i begin to spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?”

Echoes Prufrock’s timidity and lack of courage in front of other people.

Preludes Rhapsody The Hollow Men Journey of the Magi

Lack of faith/disillusionment (disappointment) Poem

Technique

Quote

Analysis

Biblical Allusion

“Death’s dream kingdom” and “Death’s other kingdom”

He makes these allusions to heaven and hell and explores these ideas making reference to

Love Song Preludes Rhapsody The Hollow Men

human mortality but also maintaining textual integrity. Journey of the Magi

Cumulative Listing

“Then the camel men cursing and grumbling and running away, and wanting liquor and women”

They were working towards something great that will benefit them but they are still drawn to materialistic things as if they lose something on this journey

Existentialism (point of life) Poem

Technique

Quote

Analysis

Love Song

Rhyme & Reoccuring Motif

“In the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo”

The rhythm in this section of the poem mimics the rhythm of a song and have some structure like daily routines do. Shows the socialite women and how ‘high-class’ they are. Prufrock is worried about not fitting in with other people and is a constant worry for him about what others think of him.

Comment

“And indeed there will be time”

Prufrock’s anxiety has lessened, possibly because of the cat he sees

Juxtaposition

“There will be time to murder and create”

Talking about two polar opposites of life and death, and how there will be time for everything

Metaphor

Whispering lunar incantations/ Dissolve the floors of memory/ And all its clear relations

The spells from the moon are responsible for his lack of memories resulting in lack of stability in his life.

Metaphor

“Hard and curled and ready to snap”

Portrays that he is ready to kill someone and at the ‘last straw’.

Ironic Juxtaposition

“We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men”

Portrays the useless knowledge individuals hold that makes them full but ultimately lacks any worth.

Preludes Rhapsody

The Hollow Men Journey of the Magi

Urban landscape (monotony, routine, lack of life) Poem

Technique

Quote

Analysis

Imagery

“The burnt out ends of smoky days”

Suggests that life has been sapped of vitality as the modern world has lost its vibrancy and enthusiasm.

Personificatio n

“[the morning] Comes to consciousness”

The persona sees workers of the city trapped in an unnatural routine, they are constantly in a robotic routine that even the morning has more life than them.

Imagery

“Grimy scraps”, “withered leaves”

Presents an oppressive sense of hopelessness.

Simile

“Wipe your hand across your mouth and laugh; The worlds revolve like ancient women”

People used to think the world was held up by women.

Personificatio n

“Shakes the memory”

Personified midnight is dislodging the distinguishing power of the rational mind.

Imagery

“‘Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter, / Slips out its tongue”

A living creature out in the night with the persona

Anaphora / Repetition / Rhyme / Personificatio n

“The street lamp sputtered, / The street lamp muttered”

Lamps made sounds due to burning oil

Love Song Preludes

Rhapsody

The Hollow Men Journey of the Magi

The Hollow Men: sort

Theme: Empty Knowledge & Existence: - Know so much about nothing - Lost ability to speak / Life is meaningless - “We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men / Leaning together / Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!” - Repetition / Anaphora: “We are” - Extended metaphor: Are humans really scarecrows? - “Shape without form, shade without colour, paralyses force, gesture without motion” - Paradox / Oxymoron: We cannot accomplish anything, we are incomplete - “In this hollow valley / This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms / In this last of meeting places / We grope together / And avoid speech” - We are all together in a limbo (in between hell and heaven) world but we do not talk to each other - “The hope only / Of empty men.” - Enjambment: Misleading, hopelessness to emphasise the emptiness of hope - “For thine is the Kingdom / For Thine is / Life is / For Thine is the” - Fragmentation: Loss of memory, loss of flow, free verse/prayer - “Mistah Kurtz - he dead. / A penny for the Old Guy” - “Those who have crossed / With direct eyes, to death’s other kingdom / Remember us - if at all - not as lost / Violent souls, but only / As hollow men / The stuffed men.” - Allusion: Epigraph - Have purpose → Defies the British empire Theme: Progressive Stagnation (we are being trapped, suffocated): - Stagnation - In a twilight kingdom - Desert - Cactus Land - “Our dried voices, when / We whisper together / Are quiet and meaningless / As wind in dry grass / or rats’ feet over broken glass” - Imagery: A dry desert world we are living in. Our voices are dry because of the arid desert. - “Those who have crossed / With direct eyes, to death’s other kingdom / Remember us - if at all - not as lost / Violent souls, but only / As hollow men / The stuffed men.” - Scarecrow’s purpose of protecting from produce and crops is non-existent. There is no point, it is a barren desert land - “Death’s dream kingdom...twilight kingdom...death’s other kingdom…” - “...This is the dead land / This is the cactus land...hollow valley” - Rather than moving on to death’s kingdom they are stuck in the twilight kingdom - T.S Eliot is characterising the setting as stagnation an immobility. Characterises men as scarecrows. - “Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow” - “For Thine is the Kingdom” - “Between the conception / And the creation / Between the emotion / And the response / Falls the Shadow - Repetition: We are stuck between two worlds. - “Here we go round the prickly pear” - Repetition: A play appropriation to a nursery rhyme meaningless act of going around in circles. - “This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / not with a bang but with a whimper.” - Repetitive: Repetition builds a pace but ends in an anticlimactic ending....