Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2018

7

spirituality, and ritual should be re-embraced by the world, and changes brought about by modernism such as materialism and secularisation should be rejected.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: 1910 - 1915 Eliot’s seminal poem is about a twentieth century man who has lost the capacity to experience the magic and mystery of life, elaborating on the themes explored in the first poem. The poem demonstrates the stasis that twentieth century life causes and elucidates how it has emasculated the protagonist, Prufrock, and yet the ways Eliot conveys this message is anything but traditional. Prufrock is one of these lonely people in the “1000 furnished rooms” in the Preludes . The title ‘The Love Song of of J. Alfred Prufrock’ sets up the continued juxtaposition of opposites throughout the poem, by introducing it as a love song but using a formal name for the addressee, rather than their first name which a lover would normally use. One of these ‘radical’ devices used in this poem is juxtaposition, and it is evident in the first three lines of the poem, where the first line calls for action but the second line demonstrates distraction with regards to the beauty of the scene, which leads to inaction like a ‘patient etherized upon a table’. As in Preludes , Eliot refers to the monotonousness of life through a series of endless days sleeping in ‘cheap hotels’ and eating in ‘sawdust restaurants’. He says that this leads us to ask ‘What is it?’, questioning the meaning of life. Eliot continues to innovate when he utilises repetition to conjure a metaphor of people engaged in meaningless pursuits. The refrain, “In the room come and go / Talking of Michelangelo”, between verses, creates a sense of endless and meaningless rounds. It creates the impression of secular life being long, unchanging and without substance. Later, Eliot uses repetition again, when the narrator insists that ‘there will be time’, suggesting that life is long, and that it is easy to procrastinate and put ‘all the works and days of hands’ off for another time. The act of feigning, where one prepares ‘a face to meet the faces that you meet’ is explored to suggest that you have to alter your personality and