T.S. ELIOT: COMPARATIVE TABLE
TEXT
‘The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock’ (1915)
’Preludes’ (1917)
‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’
(1917)
‘The Hollow Men‘ (1925)
‘Journey of the Magi’
(1927)
SPEAKER/PERSONA
Prufrock: middle-aged man
(speaking to oneself). Interior
monologue, narrative of self.
Eliot uses his narrative voice
to express his displeasure
with the modern world.
A solemn flaneur that presents a
detailed analysis of society
through the eyes of an isolated
and disconnected individual. The
person wanders through society.
Perspective of one of the
Hollow Men in the poem
that becomes a product of
his context.
Magis. Allegorical dramatic
monologue.
PREVALENT TECHNIQUES
USED
Allusion, Intertextuality, Imagery,
Dramatic monologue (form)
Quadriptych (written in four
parts), Metaphor, Iambic
tetrameter
Synecdoche
Temporal references,
anthropomorphism, metaphor,
direct speech, personification,
objective correlative.
Allusion, syntactic
parallelism, symbolism,
metaphor, epistrophe,
natural imagery, dramatic
monologue
Alliteration, rhetorical
question, pun, pathetic
fallacy, synecdoche, and
allusion
MODERNISM
(CHARACTERISTICS OF)
Free verse (limited form), nonlinear, abstract narrative
Eliot creates a vision of
modern society in ‘Preludes’
through modernism
characterised by growth
and capitalism and
consumerism, as spurred on
by the industrial revolution,
intermingled with the shock
and devastation of WW1.
‘Rhapsody’ is an enthusiastic
expression of feeling that acts as
an antithesis to the flaneur’s
ennui/satisfaction in the poem.
The contrast in these two ideas
provides emphasis on the
disillusionment of modernity in
its lack of social progress,
alienating society and
disorientating individuals from
meaningful experiences. This lack
of spirituality likened to a painful
hell is similarly echoed in the
modern world of ‘Preludes’.
The community of Hollow
Men in the poem are
paralysed by their own
inaction.
Influenced by modernist
ideas of alienation,
isolation and hopelessness
of the modern world.
Contextual influence on
this idea of modernism:
‘The Hollow Men’ was
written during Eliot’s
nervous breakdown (19215) and the agonised state
of society following WW1 in which experiences
related to the alienation
of self and inability to
connect to the evolving
modern world were
prevalent.
KEY QUOTES
“In the room the women come
and go Talking of Michelangelo.”
“Do I dare Disturb the universe?”
“And I have seen the eternal
Footman hold my coat, and
snicker, And in short, I was
afraid.”
“In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which
a minute will reverse.”
“I have measured out my life with
coffee spoons.”
“A lonely cab-horse steams”
“Morning comes to
consciousness Of faint stale
smells of beer”
“Eaten smooth and polished. As
if the world gave up the secret of
its skeleton.”
“I could see nothing behind
those child's eyes.”
“Soiled hands”
“Four and five and six
o’clock”
“The moon has lost its memory, a
washed-out smallpox cracks her
face.”
“Eyes” and “Hands”
“shakes a dead geranium”
“Certain certainties”
“a broken spring in the factory
yard”
“Some infinitely gentle”
“Revolve like ancient
women”
“Vacant lots”
“The last twist of the knife.”
“A broken spring in a factory
yard”
“A washed out smallpox cracks
her face”
“Shape without form,
shade without colour,
paralysed force, gesture
without motion.”
“This is the way the world
ends. Not with a bang but
with a whimper.”
“We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men”
“Death’s dream kingdom”
“Broken column”
“A cold coming we had of
it, just the worst time of
the year for a journey, and
such a long journey: the
ways deep and the
weather sharp, the very
dead of Winter.”
“And the silken girls
bringing sherbet”
“and running away, and
wanting them liquor and
women”
“Fading star”
“Three trees on the low
sky”
“Rat’s coat, crowskin,
crossed staves”
“This: well we'll add all that
way for birth or death?”
“Birth was hard and bitter
agony for us, like death,
our death”
“I should be glad of
another death”
POEM’S MESSAGE
Modern man can be easily
divided, fragmented, and isolated
from himself, and/or society.
One must avoid ennui, inaction,
and idealistic thinking to
circumvent spiritual, social, and
personal paralysis. In other
words, passivity results in death.
INTERTEXTUAL
ALLUSIONS
“And indeed there will be time” allusion to Andrew Marwell ‘to
his loy mistress.
“In the room the women come
and go Talking of Michelandelo Refrain allusion.
Eliot suggests that Christ’s
redemption (soul and
suffering) is lost on 20th
century society because it is
nihilistic and preoccupied,
prone to following
mundane rituals rather than
seeking genuine substance
of fulfilment in life.
Eliot’s poem ‘Rhapsody on a
Windy Night’ details the
disillusionment of society
following the industrialisation of
society, stimulating a collective
movement towards monotonous
lifestyles and nihilistic beliefs that
pertain to a meaningless
experience of life. Eliot suggests
the daily urban lifestyle is a
continual spiral towards hell in
his repeated references to
Dante’s Inferno to exemplify the
alienation of society from the
true essence of life.
The men are exiting
somewhere between life
and death, in a world, they
have no agency in. It
becomes clear as the
poem progresses that they
are unable to enter into
true death. There is no
money for them to cross
the river. Instead, they
have to wait for something
to change.
Spiritual Death and
Rebirth. Though the poem
is directly about one of the
magi, the three wise men
who went to visit the baby
Jesus at the time of his
birth, the poem is more
generally about the pains
of letting go of one way of
life—one faith—and
acknowledging the birth of
another.
Allusion to Christ as a
symbol to redemption or
hope society can find
meaning in Christ but no
one takes notice.
“Put your shoes at the door,
sleep, prepare for life. The last
twist of the knife”
The epigraph creates
intertextuality in that it
alludes to the desired
meaning which Elliot
wished to describe. While
the poem creates a certain
dreary and hopeless
outlook on life, the
epigraph could be seen as
a prelude for what is to
come.
Eliot’s useless life was
transformed by an
encounter with the King.
Jesus was his light at the
end of the tunnel. The
entire poem was an
allusion to the Christmas
Story, but there were many
more allusions, symbols,
and imagery that helped us
see him transform from
hopelessness to
hopefulness.
“And time for all the works and
days of hands” - Allusion to
Hesiod.
Allusion to Dante’s inferno in
that the final destinations that
people reside in are analogous suggesting urban decay and
decrepitude/vacuity of the
individual.
In Dante’s inferno, it’s hell but in
Rhapsody it is the end of a
modern working day (which he
associates with a painful
existence).
“I am no prophet” - allusion to
John the Baptist.
“I am not Prince Hamlet” allusion to Shakespeare: not
leading men.
“Mermaids” - allusion to Homer’s
odyssey.
REFERNCE TO AND IDEAS
ABOUT TIME
Time to show alienation of
modern day citizen. Time is
out of order suggesting that
Eliot’s use of temporal
references throughout the poem
are used to emphasise the
Time is disordered, out of
order, Maji can’t make
sense, reader is
STRUCTURE
(Musical forms used/nonlinear/time/free
verse/Modernist
characteristics)
Free verse.
OBSERVATIONS/
CONNECTIONS (BETWEEN
POEMS)
Strong sensory/olfactory imagery
of the urban landscape in decay.
‘Preludes’ connections;
greatness/images “flicker”, nonlinear sense of time, coffee
stands/coffee spoons used to
represent drudgery and routine.
man artificially manipulates
his own time. We are
disconnected from the
natural order, creating
disorientation and
alienation in society.
fragmented nature of modern
life that disorientates individuals
from a true meaningful
existence. The poem starts at
midnight and proceeds in a linear
order to 4 o’clock in the morning
- building connotations of the
supernatural and a progressive
descent into madness
comparable to the spiralling state
of humanity in its adoption of
nihilism and neglect of
spirituality.
Musical form, non-linear
quadriptych - written in four
parts.
Enjambement creates a flow of
conscience, which is ironic of the
cyclical monotonous rhythms of
modernity; thus, the features of
the poem complement Eliot’s
overarching argument that the
modern lifestyle is inherently
metronomic and futile.
Thematic connections:
“Rhapsody” echoes the
disillusionment of modernity
presented in “Preludes”,
suggesting the monotony of
modern life inherent with a lack
of spirituality that contributes to
a futile existence Eliot likens to
hell.
Similar experiences depicted in
the poems:
 Rhapsody: “‘Regard that
woman who hesitates
towards you in the light
of the door which opens
on her like a grin. …And
you see the corner of
disorientated, journey
doesn’t make sense.
Epigraph at the beginning
– and not just one
epigraph, but two. Nor
does Eliot use a strict
meter like iambic
pentameter, though he
sometimes used regular
meters in other
poems. five sections of
varying lengths.
Three stanzas of different
shapes and lengths. The
first stanza is 20 lines, the
second is 11, and the third
is 12. The stanzas do,
however, represent
distinct stages in the
poem's development.

KEY THEME- physical
setting of the Modernist
landscape reflecting
psychological/uncertainty
-
-
Prufrock is taken apart
psychologically.
Psychological realism,
endless stream of
consciousness fashion
Prufrock exhibits his
innermost mind to
Eliot’s readers.
Prufrock is a bundle of
modern inhibitions and
neuroses.
KEY THEME- loss of
purpose, futility and
search for meaning
-
Process of selfreflection, dissection of
self.
KEY THEME – loss pf
identity and alienation
-
Poetry is a quarrel with
oneself.
Begin with question of
identity.
-
inferior male judged
by his external
appearance, a man
not able to attract any
desirable woman.
Ironically, we see that
Urban Decay & Spirituality
her eye Twists like a
crooked line”
The woman’s gaze
reveals “crooked
wickedness” that
paralyses the persona
for a moment - similar
to Prufrock in Eliot’s
‘Love song’ where he
feels pinned to the wall
at the party.
Urban decay, disillusionment of
modernity and growing decline
of humanity in the absence of
their spirituality.
 Can relate to class.
-
-
KEY THEME- superficiality
and materialism
KEY THEME- loss of
spirituality and secularity
KEY THEME- possibility of
redemption
he has a rich internal
consciousness and
indeed something that
might interest a
woman if you are able
to sing his love song.
He is inhibited as he
proceeds to work out
his conflict between
romance and realism
within his own being.
He begins by envying a
sub-human form of
life. Burden of selfconsciousness is
uniquely human,
negative selfconscious, awareness
of one’s own
inferiority.
Source of inhibitions is
inescapable.
KEY THEME- emotional
and moral decay Eliot
sustains a strong theme
of the decay of the
human spirit. He
perceived the rise of
modernisation and the
lessening importance of
traditional values as the
cause of this decay.
KEY THEME- Loss of faith,
loss of belief in self
The process of Prufrock’s
emotional and moral decay is
evident in the poem’s structure.
The opening stanzas are of length
and often digress, representing
Prufrock’s dithering personality,
while the ending stanzas are
short and vague, representing his
lack of energy and unwillingness
to continue. Through the poem’s
free verse, there is an insertion of
iambic pentameter in lines 111119 – “No! I am not Prince
Hamlet…” Combined with other
intertextual references, namely
the epigraph taken from Dante’s
Inferno and the biblical allusions
to John the Baptist and Lazarus,
Eliot proves Prufrock’s lack of
imagination, to the extent that he
cannot even claim originality over
his own thoughts.
Eliot presents us with an
aggregation of negative
urban images, “burnt
out…grimy scraps…muddy
feet,” which reflect the
disintegration of the
modern world. Further, the
inextricable connection
between the internal and
external world is expressed
with the assimilation of the
persona’s soul with the city
street (“trampled by
insistent feet”) reflecting
how the modern city and
lifestyle assists in the decay
of the ‘soul’ of humanity.
Allied to this, Eliot explores
the decay of emotion
through the paradox of
some “infinitely
gentle/infinitely suffering
thing”. This reduces pain in
the modern world to a
commonplace and merely
“gentle” emotion.
To represent the replacement of
romanticism with modernism,
Eliot uses the dichotomy
between the natural light of the
moon as a symbol of love and the
artificial light of the streetlamp
as a symbol of it’s decay. This is
prominent through the gross
imagery the cat and his “rancid
butter”, symbolising Eliot’s
perception of the reality of life,
and of the moon and her “paper
rose”, symbolising the frailty of
love in the modern world. The
olfactory imagery of “female
smells” and “cocktail smells” that
“cross and cross across her
brain” conveys the heightened
value of sex and its prominence
over love and morals in the
contemporary context.
Lifelessness and aridity are
recurring images
throughout the poem,
such as “This is the dead
land/This is cactus land.”
This reflects Eliot’s
perceived moral “dryness”
in modern society.
Similarly, he compares
“our dried voices” through
similes to “wind in dry
grass” or “rats feet over
broken glass”,
representing a lack of
energy and emotional
decay. Eliot characterises
humanity as “empty men”,
essentially ‘soulless’, and
through the allusion to
‘eyes are the window to
the soul’ (“the eyes are
not here/there are no eyes
here”) Eliot creates further
meaning about the hollow
men’s capacity to emote.
The emptiness (without
belief), being in a state of
spiritual stagnation.
Essence of the Wasteland
Death comes in different
guises – the ‘dammed
proper’…’men who do not
have the courage or will to
be dammed… and the
living dead # ‘death is life
and life is death’
Symbolic of Eliot’s own
conversion to Christianity,
the process of decline is
evident in the structure of
“The Journey of the Magi”,
as a sense of decay does
not arise until the final
stanza. Within the final
stanza, Eliot conveys his
consistent stance that the
modern man leads a life
devoid of any significance,
through the binary
opposites in “I had seen
birth and death,/But had
thought they were
different.” This depicts
decaying humanity in
which birth is of no greater
importance than death.