(Hardy/Eliot) Men
- Created by: NHow02
- Created on: 19-03-19 15:24
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- Men
- Moments of Vision
- 'whole life foul or fair, glassing it - where?'
- Alludes to Macbeth's witches, which reveal his true nature (can't escape the truth)
- Rhetorical question creates a frustrated effect (he can reflect but can't be enlightened)
- Wishes to prove himself as a man
- 'us, and our heart'
- Plural pronouns reflects all of mankind as well as men
- 'whole life foul or fair, glassing it - where?'
- Prufrock
- 'Do I dare?'
- 'disturb the universe?' / 'eat a peach?'
- Compares simple actions with existential ones
- Rhetorical questions are not answered (vulnerable effect)
- Rhapsody
- 'The street-sputtered / 'the street-lamp muttered'
- Man's mental breakdown (collapse of rational thought/ approach to life)
- 'street' creates cold, isolated effect (male plight personified)
- Wasteland poems: 'Jug Jug' to 'twit twit twit'
- From 1897 the women's suffrage campaign gained momentum, resulting in votes for women over 30 in 1918
- Eliot describes his work as 'rhythmical grumbling'
- 'The street-sputtered / 'the street-lamp muttered'
- Repetition creates hesitant effect
- 'disturb the universe?' / 'eat a peach?'
- 'The skirts that trail along the floor -'
- 'Skirts' suggests speaker is looking at the floor, downcast
- Women were taking on more prominent roles in post-war society
- Hyphon suggests women are unreachable
- POL: 'mounted on my hands and knees'
- Modernist image, should show progress but speaker is reluctant
- Society has dragged men down until all they can do is ***** for passion/ salvation
- 'Skirts' suggests speaker is looking at the floor, downcast
- 'Do I dare?'
- The Hollow Men
- 'throbbing between two lives'
- Alludes to Tiresias Being with male & female features + gift of prophecy)
- Omniscient observer of failed relationships
- Repulsive word 'throbbing' links to 'carbuncular'
- Painful swelling beneath the skin (men are ready to burst with loss/desire?)
- Interim state of the 'Hollow Men' (struggles to connect with his own masculinity)
- In 1921, Eliot took a break from his job to recover from a mental breakdown
- Alludes to Tiresias Being with male & female features + gift of prophecy)
- 'Not with a bang but a whimper'
- Onomat-opoeia suggest a metaphorical bomb
- Survived WW1, but real death will be of society
- Sound alludes to postwar PTSD
- 'whimper' suggests cowardice (society is unable to function)
- Men are 'trapped inside their own...private cave of feeling' seen with 'unflattering exactness'
- Paradoxical effect of 'hollow' + 'stuffed' (souls cannot be reformed)
- Repetition of 'Between' (trapped in an intermittent state/ purgatory)
- Repetitive use of 'we' pronouns creates an inclusive effect
- Eliot insists that poetry must be written with impersonal intent (not as himself)
- Society is not a blank slate (beyond a mental breakdown)
- Onomat-opoeia suggest a metaphorical bomb
- 'throbbing between two lives'
- To Lizbie Browne
- 'so swift your life and mine so slow'
- Sibilance emphasises separation (long vowel sound slows pace of poem)
- 'coaxed and caught'
- Sharp 'c' alliteration creates a bitter tone (regrets he did not take action)
- Suggests he believes Lizbie was stolen (cannot admit his mistake)
- 'Men speak of me'
- Separated from his masculinity (too cowardly)
- Sharp 'c' alliteration creates a bitter tone (regrets he did not take action)
- Regularity of sestets shows Hardy wants a settled life
- 'so swift your life and mine so slow'
- In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'
- 'thin smoke without flame'
- Smoke screen creates a lost effect (soldiers didn't know what they were fighting for)
- 'thin' suggests lack of shield OR weakened soldiers (no substance left)
- Written during the 1st World War. Hardy predicts how war will end
- War stanza in the middle of the poem (wordly event that we will recover from)
- 'without flame' suggests soldiers are fighting without hope/light
- 'will go onward' was a typical WW1 attitude (using soldiers as canon-fodder)
- Smoke of no-man's land (clearing, end of the aftermath)
- Smoke screen creates a lost effect (soldiers didn't know what they were fighting for)
- 'a maid and her wight'
- Archaic word represents societal recuperation (past returns)
- However, 'wight' suggests a temporary affair (loss of position in society)
- Hynes: 'stoic regret of the irrevocable passage of time'
- Hardy's couples are often separated (e.g. 'a soldier and a wife')
- Emma died in 1912 (cycle of war=cycle of grief) so Hardy struggled with love
- Archaic word represents societal recuperation (past returns)
- 'thin smoke without flame'
- Moments of Vision
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