“Six
“Six o’clock… trampled by insistent feet at four and five and six o’clock” Preludes
- Motif of time symbolic of society coming home from work and the monotonous nature of that endless routine.
- The routine based society was created to suit the style of work in factories
“Half-
Eliot utilises isolating imagery to present the industrialised landscape of “half-deserted streets” introduces perception of modernity as fragmented and isolating.
“Till human…
“Till human voices wake us, and we drown”
- Sense of transcendence and an ‘escape’ from the modern world is disrupted by humans as ‘voices’ as the world ‘drowns’ and decays
- Metaphor for the modern world disrupting the beauty of the natural world
“In the room…
“In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo” - Prufrock
- Prufrock is placed outside the conversation by Eliot and is alienated from the movement surrounding his modern world.
“Do I…
“Do I dare / Disturb the universe?”
- The use of a rhetorical question and hyperbolising the social setting from a room to “the universe” gives insight into Prufrock’s state of paralysis by procrastination and existential angst.
“A hundred…
“A hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions, before the taking of a toast and tea” - Prufrock
- Toast and tea acts as a metonym for mundane routine in daily life, which the modernist flaneur has to give significant thought to before proceeding with the day, exposing that even the most basic tasks the narrator faces with hesitation.
