English Adv: Mod B Essay

[diggity]

Paragraph on this question. I showed it to my teacher and she said I was missing stuff like textual integrity, modernism, and scholarly quotes. I believe I've answered the question, miss agrees but she says I still.need to include this stuff. I don't understand why. Can someone show me how I should integrate it in?

“It is through his vivid imagery of the new urban landscape that Eliot’s work captures alienation.”

To what extent does this statement relate to your own understanding of your prescribed text? In your response, refer to the quotation and two of the prescribed poems.

An integral component of the Modernist era and the surrounding urbanisation is the increased fragility of the human psyche. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” revolves around the isolation and alienation that stems from the intense insecurity coming from this damaged psyche. Prufrock is shown to be self-inflicting his alienation, the origin of which being his social anxiety. This is evident in effective form in the first stanza, where the juxtaposition of “Let us go” and “Like a patient etherised upon a table;” works to demonstrate the paralysed psyche of Prufrock who wishes to assimilate into a social environment yet is unable to do so because his anxiety has ‘etherised’ him. The imagery following is a stellar example of the vivid imagery of the urban landscape that Eliot uses to capture alienation.(   further explain   ) Prufrock here is consciously choosing to inflict isolation upon himself, reflected through the choice adjective of ‘certain’ in “Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,” - he is decidedly following the  streets which he has described as “deserted”, intentionally furthering his isolation by removing himself the chance of interaction. Prufrock can be seen again to detach himself from socialising, preferring to observe in “In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo.” This decided isolation is detrimental to his psyche, which can be seen through the marked shift in tone towards the end of the poem, with the effects of this visibly wearing on him. The mermaids in the last stanzas are an allusion to “Donne’s Song”, who would sing to sailors to lure them to their deaths. Prufrock believes that he has become so detached from society that he thinks that, “I do not think they will sing to me.” This is an effective representation of the alienation he has encumbered due to  his own anxiety that is caused by the new urban landscape. The imagery he used throughout the poem can still appeal to a modern audience because of their complex and innovative representation of the isolation caused by anxiety in the modern world. The vivid imagery he utilises does not achieve this on it’s own, however, being supported by the numerous juxtapositions and allusions to truly encapsulate the alienation felt in the Modernist era.