TS Elliot

Question	Answer
Preludes: Exhaustion	"Burnt out ends of smoky days" - “smoky” – gloom, pollution, industrialization – Free association = linking the image to the burning out of a cigarette
Preludes: 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
Preludes: 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
Preludes: 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")
Preludes: 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"
Preludes: Destruction of the world	"His soul stretched across the sky" - personification of the city "Or trampled by insistent feet"
Magi: 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
Magi: 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
Magi: Changing world	"We returned to our places, these Kingdoms/ But no longer at ease here.../ With an alien people clutching their gods"
Magi: Disappointment	"Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory" - anticlimactic discovery
Magi: 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"
Magi: 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"
Magi: 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
Rhapsody: Hours of the night	"12 O'clock", "Half past one", "Half past 2", "half past four", "Four o'clock"
Rhapsody: 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
Rhapsody: 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
Rhapsody: 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
Hollow men:	Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion
Prufrock: awkward/ anxiety	“To lead you to an overwhelming question…” Ellipses = hesitation, nervousness – ambiguity as to what the question is
Prufrock: facades	- “To prepare a face to meet the faces you meet”
Prufrock: 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
Prufrock: insecurity	“(they will say ‘how is hair is growing thin!’)”
Prufrock: 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"
Prufrock: 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"
Prufrock: 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"
Preludes: Jesus	"I am moved by fancies that are curled/ around these images, and cling:/ The notion of some infinitely gentle/ infinitely suffering thing"
Potter Woodbery	says that it is because of Eliots fragmented "modern metaphors and similies" that allows responders to gain "fuller and closer examination"
B Rajan	What 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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	Created by Brianna McCarthy over 8 years ago