T.S.Eliot Essay

“The evening [is] spread out… like a parient etherised on a table”

-personified image emphasises metaphysical fears present in modernist era

“Lazarus, come from the dead.”

Intertextual refernece to Dante highlights his desire to transcend the mundaneness of his life through spiritual means

“Do I dare disturb the universe?”

Dental alliteration highlights Prufrock's hesitance to engage with spiritual experiences.

“The eternal Footman hold[ing] my coat.”

Personification of death enforces the protagonist’s uncertainty that religion will absolve him of a painful death.

“Those who have crossed… to death’s other kingdom.”

• Motif of River Styx

• Biblically alludes to Heaven, conveying the desire for spiritual fulfilment

“Quiet,” “meaningless” and “dry.”

Accumulation connotes a depleted state if consciousness

“Lips that would kiss form prayers to broken stone.”

Biblical imagery emphasises futile attempts at worship and how their corrupt prayers go unheard

“Between the conception and the creation….falls the shadow.”

• Anaphora emphasises inability to achieve the metaphysical fulfilment

• Biblical and human juxtaposition indicates the gap between spiritual desire and one’s humanity

“The ways deep and the weather sharp, the very dead of winter.”

Sensory imagery highlights the anguish faced by the Magi

Description of Christ’s birth as simply “satisfactory.”

Low modal language suggests spiritual decline, grappling with the anxieties of Eliot's modernist era

“With an alien people clutching their Gods, I should be glad of another death.”

• Anomaly

• High modal statement enforces the extent to which the Magi were hungry for more religious experiences

“I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.”

• Contrast

• Connotes suffering and pain at the hands of spirituality, thus enforcing the lengths to which humans go to in order to achieve spiritual experiences