Flashcards
TS Elliot
Cards in this deck (28)
- 1Preludes: Exhaustion"Burnt out ends of smoky days" - “smoky” – gloom, pollution, industrialization – Free association = linking the image to the burning out of a cigarette
- 2Preludes: Grime"Gusty shower", "grimy scraps" "smells of steaks in passageways" - alliteration of S sound - sensory descriptions of surroundings creates the feeling of dirtiness and litter
- 3Preludes: Poverty"Showers beat on broken blinds and chimney pots"- alliteration of B = destruction and dishevelment
"Like ancient women/ gathering fuel in vacant lots" - scavenging, desperation and loss of dignity - 4Preludes: Alienation"On the corner of the streets/ a lonely cab horse stamps" - abandonment
"You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands" - emotional isolation from the busy crowds ("with all the muddy feet that press") - 5Preludes: Perpetuity"Six O'clock", "Four, five and six o'clock" - the repetition of mundane lives, which are ruled by routine
"wipe your hand across your mouth and laugh/ the world revolves like ancient women/ gathering fuel in vacant lots" - 6Preludes: Destruction of the world"His soul stretched across the sky" - personification of the city
"Or trampled by insistent feet" - 7Magi: Suffering“And the night fires going out, and the lack of shelters/ and the cities hostile the towns unfriendly/ and the villages dirty” – accumulation of struggle –enjambment suggests the never-ending length of the journey – sense of overall struggle
- 8Magi: Setting/ World"And the camels" - allows for free association of the location (camels = desert/ middle east)
"And the silken girls bringing sherbet" - silk= middle eastern resource, sherbet = exotic treats - 9Magi: Changing world"We returned to our places, these Kingdoms/ But no longer at ease here.../ With an alien people clutching their gods"
- 10Magi: Disappointment"Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory" - anticlimactic discovery
- 11Magi: Fear/ doubt"With the voices in our ears saying/ that this was all folly"
"the birth was/hard and bitter for us, like death, our death" - 12Magi: Religion- "And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow" - majesty, images of god Revelations 6:2
- "Three trees on a low sky" - Luke 23:32
"Alien people clutching to their gods" - 13Magi: Death" this Birth was/ Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death" - Birth of Christ suspends the possibility of pagan beliefs, which "kills" this culture and way of life
"I should wish for another death" - the impact of this birth on non-Christian believers - 14Rhapsody: Hours of the night"12 O'clock", "Half past one", "Half past 2", "half past four", "Four o'clock"
- 15Rhapsody: Madness/ hypnosis"Held a lunar synthesis/ whispering lunar incantations" - alliteration of S sound = whispering
"As a madman shakes a dead geranium" - pointless efforts/ the character = mad - 16Rhapsody: The city"reaches of the street" - distorted, endless streets
"all its devisions and precisions” – relating to the current state of the world- thrives off industrialization, war and capitalism – alliteration of S sound - 17Rhapsody: woman“The street lamp said ‘regard that woman/ .../ you see the border of her dress/ is torn and stained with sand/ you see the corner of her eye/ twists like a crooked pin" - enjambment = sense of shock or horror – gruesome imagery “torn”, “crooked” = disheveled and scary – These are the kinds of people who wander the streets at night
- 18Hollow men:Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion - 19Prufrock: awkward/ anxiety“To lead you to an overwhelming question…” Ellipses = hesitation, nervousness – ambiguity as to what the question is
- 20Prufrock: facades- “To prepare a face to meet the faces you meet”
- 21Prufrock: time“And time yet for a hundred indecisions/ and for a hundred visions and revisions” – stagnant, changing his mind – he is so insecure that he cannot move
- 22Prufrock: insecurity“(they will say ‘how is hair is growing thin!’)”
- 23Prufrock: fog"Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,/ lingered upon the pools that stand in drains/ let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,/ slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,/ and seeing that it was a soft October night,/ curlced once about the house, and fell asleep"
- 24Prufrock: Higher power/ omnipotence"I am Lazarus, come back from the dead!"
"Squeeze the universe into a ball"
reference to guido from inferno
"I have heard the mermaids singing each to each"
"I have lingered in the chambers of the sea" - 25Prufrock: Hamlet/ Polonius"No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be/... Am an attendant lord, one that will do/ to swell a progress, start a scene or two"
- 26Preludes: Jesus"I am moved by fancies that are curled/ around these images, and cling:/ The notion of some infinitely gentle/ infinitely suffering thing"
- 27Potter Woodberysays that it is because of Eliots fragmented "modern metaphors and similies" that allows responders to gain "fuller and closer examination"
- 28B RajanWhat makes Eliot's poems so enduring is precisely that his poetry "becomes the event" and "lived through a form that can speak about itself"
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- Flashcards of quotes and themes for the HSC Advanced English unit studying the words of TS Elliot; Preludes, Journey of the Magi, Rhapsody on a Windy Night
- Created by
- Brianna McCarthy · May 2016
- Updated
- Apr 6, 2018
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