Prufrock has noticed the women’s arms – white and bare, and wearing bracelets – just as he is attracted by the smell of the perfume on the women’s dresses. Yes: even arms are imbued with curious symbolism in Eliot’s poem. Meanwhile, Prufrock’s cryptic statement that he has measured his life out in coffee-spoons (not teaspoons, the usual unit of measurement) suggests that he has already mapped out how many coffees he can expect to enjoy over the rest of his life.ĭoes this symbolise his longing for certainty and routine, or the rather mundane life to which he feels condemned? We can crave order over our lives, but a life stripped of all excitement and impulsiveness can become deadened and predictable. The more surreal or fantastical images and symbols of ‘Prufrock’ are at odds with the rather dull, staid, stultifying middle-class backdrop, the ordinary settings in which Prufrock has these more outlandish daydreams of escape: the references to cups, marmalade, tea, and ices all summon the drawing-rooms of respectable New England society and the tea dances where young, unmarried men and women would meet and, following fairly strict social codes, approach each other with a view to courtship and, eventually, marriage. It is real life, the life of New England society, which really ‘drowns’ or suffocates him: the sea provides escape. Ironically, he only ‘drowns’ – he and the mermaids in their oceanic paradise are destroyed, in his imagination – when ‘human voices’ recall him from his reverie, or daydream. Indeed, Prufrock seems happy enough listening to the bewitching sound of the mermaids’ song (a detail possibly picked up from John Donne), and being left alone to enjoy their music. Although Prufrock’s statement that he does not think the mermaids will sing to him can be interpreted as self-pity (even the mermaids won’t notice Prufrock), he seems to welcome this blessed indifference as a contrast to the women he’s forced to socialise with at the dances and tea parties. Use words, phrases, and images from the poem.The second notable sea-image in the poem comes at the end, when Prufrock talks about lingering in the sea, with mermaids singing to each other.Fill up the head with what is going on in Prufrock’s mind, based on what you learned from the poem.I’ll be adding the template to this post very soon, so please bookmark and check back!) (This was something I drew, photocopied, and provided to students on 11″ x 14″ copy paper. When we completed all those activities, I felt it was time for kids to show their understanding with some Prufrockian Perspective art. Discuss how their stanza fits into the whole.Determine a theme or attitude in their stanza.Specifically, they were to work with a partner to: I assigned stanzas to pairs of students and asked them to do a close reading, taking stock of their particular stanza and its meaning before sharing their thoughts with the class.The cold read was followed by a second reading where we annotated and jotted down noticings regarding word choice, imagery, allusions.And then it was time for Prufrock, where I read aloud the poem as a cold read merely to provide students a first impression.For contrast, we followed up these pre-Modern poems with the Modern classics, Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro”, and “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens. We read and discussed pre-Modern poems such as William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, “Sonnet 43” (How Do I Love Thee?) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and “Psalm of Life” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.Eliot, his career, and other basic biographical facts. Modern masterpieces) and the events that spawned the Modern Era. We took notes on Modernism (including comparing pre-Modern vs.Here’s a quick rundown of how my classes worked with Prufrock before making these:

This is the bulletin board I made to showcase all the Prufrocks that my junior students made at the conclusion of our study.

Love song alfred prufrock