The Love Song of J. Alfred Purfock by Annesha Al and Arindam Modak - Essay Example

 Throughout the poem, there are different physical settings like a cityscape, interiors where women are talking about an artist, and fireplaces. Prufrock then realizes here status, when he says that he is not Prince Hamlet (M and Al et al.).

Modernist features

In order to understand why this poem comes under the definition of modernism, it is important to understand what is modernism. In the era of the pre-modern world, people used to live far away from each other didn’t interact with each other much and didn’t travel much. But in the post-modern world, everything became advanced and influenced by technology. There were people who were living together and even those who weren’t close to each other, who found out what they were up to with the help of cell phones and the internet (Ackerley). The modernist poets and even artists are those people who were living in the middle of this transformation, which was the start of the 19th century and the end of the 20th century.

Thus, this poem is a classic example of a modernist poem, because its American author, T.S. Eliot, moved to Britain and wrote the poem when he was 22 of age. At that time, Britain was considered to be the most modern country, and the poem’s situated in a city, which is big and dirty. The speaker of the poem is extremely unhappy, is afraid to live in the world, and is bored most of the time. The three modernist themes are present in this poem; war, city, and boredom. One characteristic of the post-modern world is that the inhabitants cannot face reality because they have low self esteems. This is what the speaker says about himself that even though he wants to talk to a woman (a thought expressed twice in the poem, thus, putting an emphasis on its importance), he is unable to do so because he cannot face reality and is really conscious about his body parts and inadequacies (Eliot and Eliot).

There are also elements of fragmentation and intertextuality, which point towards the poem being a modernist one. Fragmentation is shown as there is a conflict between Prufrock’s social and inner self, which makes him confused when it comes to making a decision about whether he should or shouldn’t approach the woman he fancies.

Conclusion

T.S. Eliot is considered to be one of the most prominent authors of modernist poetry; his poem had all the features that a modernist poem contains. His poem reveals the conditions of a modern man and makes references to a number of literary works like The Hamlet and The Bible.