Eliot and Anderson

The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock and Winesburg, Ohio both illustrate the themes of isolation, alienation, and miscommunication. Both pieces of literature also feature a sense of fragmentation in the structure of their work in addition to conveying the expressionist, dreamlike modernist feelings at the turn of the twentieth century. Moreover, there is a direct relationship between teller and listener in both of these pieces. Winesburg is composes of 22 short stories with “The Book of Grotesques” serving as its introduction. Each story ties to the others as the reader learns of the struggles that a specific character in each story must overcome. Winesburg is considered a piece of Modernist literature because although everything in the novel occurs in one setting, the characters each have their own markedly different stories. A sense of fragmentation though paradoxically connects all of the grotesques in the novel because each is stuck in a static, isolationist state that parallels the short, split sections of the novel so that each character is forced to tell his or her individual story. Likewise, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock can also be divided into several sections that convey the speaker’s difficulty in voicing his feelings and expressions. Line 60 to 61 state, “Then how should I begin/ To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?” These phrases illustrate the thick-end of the handle, the unused and remaining portion that the speaker is unable to verbalize and communicate. Such difficulty of expression also mirrors in “Paper Pills” of Winesburg, Ohio as Dr. Reefy writes his thoughts on slips of paper that are never heard by the tall, dark girl who dies. However, this evokes another parallel between both works, for both are addressing women and seem to be searching for some sort of understanding in the women. Yet both pieces also refer to abandonment—In Winesburg, Ohio the twisted apples are unpicked and fallen on the ground, but they are the sweetest and most sensational. In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock there is a sense of abandonment, but also attachment for what one can’t return to. In lines 120 through 124 it is written, “I grow old…/I grow old…/I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled./ Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?/ I shall wear white flannel trousers…” In these lines, the speaker tone conveys a sense of nostalgia because he longs to return back to youth even though he is realistically are that he cannot return. By rolling the bottom of his trousers, he reverts back to a youthful ‘trend.’ When the speaker asks if he ought to eat the peach, he questions his innocence his youth because of the connotation of fruit not only with fertility but of young age, ripe and lively. In lines 127 and 128 it reads, “Combing the white hair of the waves blown black/ When the wind blows the water white and black,” the speaker characterizes his old age, by personifying the waves to illustrate the gradual peppering of his hair and the neutral, monochromatic colors of white and black to illustrate how old he is. These colors are then juxtaposed with the mermaids in the second to last line, “By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown.” The red and brown colors are associated with the connotations of youth and animation, while mermaids are evoked because they are also active and young. Through these inferences, it is likely that the speaker feels a sense of abandonment because he is no longer young. Likewise there is also a sense of abandonment in modern society that reveres following World War I. Although Anderson, himself, grew up in a small rural town, he alludes to the modernizing America that was arising. As a result, a major theme in Winesburg concerns forsaking dreams in order to face reality and development through growth, maturation, and relinquishing childlike naiveté.