Compare and Contrast the Ways in Which the Theme of Isolation Is Presented and Explored by Sebastian Faulks and T.S Eliot in ‘Engleby’ and ‘Selected Poems’.

Eliot explains Prufrock’s isolation by hinting at the man’s anxiety. When Prufrock says, “There will be time to murder and create,” (29), he likely refers to the elimination of possibilities and the manifestation of a consequent situation and/or problem; he could refer to, for example, how best to use the time “before…toast and tea” (34), meaning breakfast, i.e. a night. Copulating would “murder” the opportunity of talking all night and could “create” a problem in the form of an illegitimate child, while sleeping would eliminate any options, thus forcing Prufrock to

Aside from the obvious symbols of water and fire, birth and purification, in T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," there is the overall symbol of journey first implied in the opening stanza: "Marie, hold on tight. And down we went." Peter Weir's film The Way Back may also be described as a work at the center of which is a symbolic journey. While Weir's film recounts the survival of a group of escapees from the Soviet Gulag as they travel from Siberia to India, Eliot's poem illustrates the fracture of the modern world and the journey/longing for peace, symbolized (like in Weir's film) by the Eastern culture which preaches "Shanti." This paper will analyze the journey of both the film and the poem and show how each symbolizes the modern desire for spiritual wholeness in a world that has lost connection with truth, peace and transcendence.

The act of being distant is known as isolation. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and a collection of poems by T.S. Eliot are texts, which will be discussed and examined to highlight connecting ideas and themes with the most focus on the theme of isolation. This essay will compare both texts to see how each relates to and deals with the idea of isolation, keeping in mind the characters, language and also the setting of Brave New World and how Aldous Huxley has portrayed this as well as examining the relative idea’s in T.S. Eliot’s poetry and how these two selected texts can be compared and contrasted to each other. Brave New World has a strong connecting theme of isolation.

Edgar Allan Poe’s, “Manuscript Found in a Bottle,” one of Poe’s first stories, evokes a mood of isolation that he feels himself, through the protagonist and the settings he and the reader visit. Also, by isolating the reader both socially and physically, Poe can examine how they feel.

T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land explores modernism, specifically focusing on the troubling of binaries and the breakdown of the traditional. The boundaries between life and death, wet and dry, male and female, and more are called into question in Eliot’s conception of modernity and the waste land. The blurring of gender boundaries—significantly through Tiresias and the hooded figure scene in “What the Thunder Said”— in the poem lends itself to Eliot’s suggestion that traditional masculinity breaks down and decays in the waste land. Traditional masculinity is further challenged through Eliot’s criticism of hyper-masculinity and heterosexual relations in the modern era through allusions to the myth of Philomela and the “young man carbuncular” scene in “The Fire Sermon.” Along with this, Eliot stages scenes charged with homoeroticism to further challenge ideas of traditional masculinity. Homoerotic scenes such as the “hyacinth girl” scene in “The Burial of the Dead” and the Mr. Eugenides scene in “The Fire Sermon” suggest an intensity and enticement towards male-male relations, while also offering a different depiction of masculinity than is laid out in the heterosexual romance scenes. Through scenes depicting queer desire and homosexual behavior, Eliot suggests that masculinity in the modern era does not need to be marked by aggression and

In T.S. Eliot’s most famous poem The Wasteland, a bleak picture of post-war London civilization is illuminated. The inhabitants of Eliot’s wasteland are living in a morally bankrupt and spiritually lost society. Through fragmented narration, Eliot recalls tales of lost love, misplaced lust, forgone spirituality, fruitless pilgrimages, and the “living dead”- those who shuffle through life without a care. These tales are the personal attempts of each person to fulfill the desires which plague them, though none ever stop to consider that what they want may not be what they need, nor do they consider why it is they feel they must do these things. Through studies in Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic perspective

The Waste Land, written by T.S. Eliot, is poem portraying the lack and/or the corruption of culture in England during the post WWI period. Eliot uses a form of symbolism, in which he uses small pieces from popular literary works, to deliver his message. He begins by saying that culture during the post WWI period is a “barren wasteland.” Eliot goes on to support this claim by saying that people in England are in a sort of shock from the violence of World War I. Eliot believes that the lack of culture open doors for immorality to grow among the populace.

American born poet, T.S. Eliot reflects modernistic ideas of isolation, individual perception and human consciousness in his many poems. His poems express the disillusionment of the post–World War I generation with both literary and social values and traditions. In one of Eliot’s most famous poems, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” which was published in 1915, a speaker who is very unhappy with his life takes readers on a journey through the hell he is living in. In this journey, Prufrock criticizes the well-dressed, upstanding citizens who love their material pleasures more than they love other people, while explaining he feels ostracized from the society of women. Eliot’s use of isolation, human consciousness and individual perception is quite evident in his dramatic monologue within the story of J. Alfred Prufrock. Prufrock wants to be seen as a normal citizen who can find friends or a lover, but his anxiety-driven isolation forces him to live a life that relates more to Hell than paradise. In over examining every fine detail of his life, Prufrock perceives himself as useless and even a waste of life. By using many poetic devices including repetition, personification, and imagery Eliot drives readers to feel the painful reality of Prufrock’s life. In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” T.S Eliot uses modernistic ideas and poetic devices to portray how Prufrock’s life relates to Hell while simultaneously criticizing social aspects of the younger post–World War I generation.

The end of The Hollow Men can only be the beginning of a deep and long reflection for thoughtful readers. T.S. Eliot, who always believed that in his end is his beginning, died and left his verse full of hidden messages to be understood, and codes to be deciphered. It is this complexity, which is at the heart of modernism as a literary movement, that makes of Eliot’s poetry very typically modernist. As Ezra Pound once famously stated, Eliot truly did “modernize himself”. Although his poetry was subject to important transformations over the course of his

Message of Hope in Eliot's The Waste Land, Gerontion, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

In this discussion of Eliot’s poem I will examine the content through the optic of eco-poetics. Eco- poetics is a literary theory which favours the rhizomatic over the arborescent approach to critical analysis. The characteristics of the rhizome will provide the overarching structure for this essay. Firstly rhizomes can map in any direction from any starting point. This will guide the study of significant motifs in ‘The Waste Land.’ Secondly they grow and spread, via experimentation within a context. This will be reflected in the study of the voice and the language with which the poem opens. Thirdly rhizomes grow and spread regardless of breakage. This will allow for an

The separation contains the Call to Adventure, Refusal or Acceptance of the Call, Supernatural Aid, Crossing of the First Threshold, and Entering the Belly of the Whale. Starting with “Mirror“ by Sylvia Plath, the Call to Adventure highlights whenever the light of the room where the setting takes place switches on and the woman of the poem presents herself in front of the mirror and judges her appearance. Whatever the mirror reflects depends on the mood of the woman. The Call to Adventure in “The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot happens when the girl goes sledding down the mountain with her cousin. Also, the Call to Adventure shows up in “No Man is an Island” by John Donne when it gives the image of both men and women being introduced and involved

T.S. Eliot in the twentieth-century wrote what is today widely-regarded as one of the most important text of modernist poems, “The Waste Land.” This poem evaluates many aspects of ancient and contemporary culture and customs, and how the contemporary culture has degraded into a wasteland. In “The Waste Land,” Eliot conjures, through allusions to multiple religions and works of literature in five separate sections, a fragmented and seemingly disjointed poem. Eliot repeatedly alludes to western and eastern cultural foundation blocks to illustrate the cultural degradation prevalent in the modern era of England. One specific eastern example is brought up in the third section of the poem, which T.S. Eliot names “Fire Sermon,” an allusion to

In compliance with Jeanette Winterson’s perspective, the struggle for resolution and meaning within the Modern world due to the rapidly changing social context of the era is underscored through the judicious use of poetic rhythms and images which has contributed to the enduring value of poetry. The internal struggles due to the contradicting desire for relationships and the desire for solidarity, and the uncertainty that underpins the search for spiritual fulfilment are encapsulated in T.S. Eliot’s poetry. This notion can be seen particularly through the thorough examination of Eliot’s poems Preludes (1917) and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915) as the audiences over time are exposed to the complexity of the human psyche which illuminates

The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot, is a journey through the arid, unproductive modern world. This poem was written post World War I when the world was still recovering. Evidence of the war could still be seen. The ground was still battle worn, and man still broken of spiritual guidance. This current state of being is what fueled Eliot’s writing. Through the poem, he connects the conditions of modern society to an infertile world void of water and spirituality. Despite the desert-like setting, there are countless images of water throughout the writing with numerous ways to illustrate them. Water plays many roles in the poem as we see its raw power. It can hurt as well as help. There is also fear of too much or too little. The portrayal of the water shows similar qualities to that of spirituality. The poem links them together to almost flow in the same manner. Water in The Waste Land can then be symbolized to a god-like figure; being the bringer of birth, fertility, death, and resurrection – hope.