1. Writing about Allusions
And Writing Theme Statements

2. Prufrock
Stream of consciousness technique, more specifically refined to be understood as an example of Modern literary technique of compressing images and fragments of thoughts and emotions without exposition or transition (Imagism and Fragmentation.) The meaning is in experiencing the gaps.
Blend of first person and third person point of view; also seen as a “split” or divided first person --“Let us go then, you and I” but there is no discernible “you” present. Two halves of one self (active and passive, private and public), or is speaker speaking to/for society?

3. Allusions – add depth of meaning (In an analysis, be sure to explain specifically what meaning it adds.)
Dante – epigraph – If I thought you could go back and tell the masses, I wouldn’t tell you, but since you can’t… Adds element of revelation – or mystery?
Marvell – “there will be time” = coy reference to “To His Coy Mistress”, a 17th c. seduction poem
Michelangelo – women come and go speaking about this Renaissance artist, but what is said? They don’t stick around to tell, and it seems their cocktail party banter is superficial. Superficial gloss on one of the world’s greats? Or real revelations withheld?

4. Lazarus, John the Baptist, Hamlet – to point out his insignificance as compared to miracles, martyrs, and tragic heroes.
Ancient Greek poetry and myth – turned on end
Cultural allusions (“taking of toast and tea”, “one-night cheap hotels”, “sawdust restaurants”) places him in modern society – superficial manners of polite society glosses over the darker aspects of life.
Scientific allusions (“sprawling on a pin” next to “arms braceleted and white and bare / (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)” – close-up, scientific look at fragment of [presumed] beautiful woman. Beauty diminished.

5. Theme Statements Basic, a starting point for further thought:
This poem is about the frustrated dreams of modern society.
Thinking vs. action
Useful for an in-class or timed essay:
Eliot’s Prufrock expresses the depressed emotion of man trying to make sense of the world around him in a society that discounts his worth. Eliot uses the techniques of a stream of consciousness approach, allusion, and the juxtaposition of fragments of images to express the futility felt by a man who believes he has wasted his life on trivial activities and hesitation.

6. Better thesis for an essay for which you are given time to think more deeply and revise:
Prufrock, a man mired in the confusion of [modern] life, has seen his “greatness flicker” and, despite – or perhaps because of – his classical education and heightened cultural awareness, hesitates to “presume” or engage in the activities of which he is reluctantly a part. In this poem, Eliot laces together, in a stream of consciousness approach, familiar images and historical, biblical, scientific, and cultural allusions to depict the futility and superficiality of [modern] life. This fragmentation mirrors the inner experience of life [at this time, and] for this speaker, hesitant to take action in a superficial society, a world under an “etherized” sky. Eliot uses the [modern] techniques of fragmentation, Imagism, and allusion to voice the confusions of life [in modern times.]

7. And, if you have time to write a book
From Thomas C. Foster’s
How to Read Literature Like a Professor

8. T. S. Eliot, in “ The Lovesong of J
T. S. Eliot, in “ The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1917) , has his neurotic, timorous main character say he was never cut out to be Prince Hamlet, that The most he could be is an extra, someone who could come on to fill out The numbers onstage or possibly be sacrificed to plot exigency. By invoking not a generic figure—“I am just not cut out to be a tragic hero, ” for instance—but The most famous tragic hero, Hamlet, Eliot provides an instantly recognizable situation for his protagonist and adds an element of characterization that says more about his self-image than would a whole page of description. The most poor Prufrock could aspire to would be Bernardo and Marcellus, The guards who first see The ghost of Hamlet’s father, or possibly Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, The hapless courtiers used by both sides and ultimately sent unknowing to their own executions. Eliot’s poem does more, though, than merely draw from Hamlet. It also opens up a conversation with its famous predecessor. This is not an age of tragic grandeur, Prufrock suggests, but an age of hapless ditherers. Yes, but we recall that Hamlet is himself a hapless ditherer, and it’s only circumstance that saves him from his own haplessness and confers on him something noble and tragic. This brief interplay between texts happens in only a couple of lines of verse, yet it illuminates both Eliot’s poem and Shakespeare’s play in ways that may surprise us, just a little, and that never would have been called into existence had Eliot not caused Prufrock to invoke Hamlet as a way of addressing his own inadequacy.