-Anup Joshi
Alienation
of Modern Man in Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and Mann’s Death
in Venice
This
paper explores how modern city life leads to the alienated life of Prufrock in
T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and Aschenbach in
Thomas Mann’s novel Death in Venice. Though both the characters wander
excitingly around the extravagant city and observe the multitudes of people,
they fail to communicate with any of them and appear as an isolated forlorn
persona. Published in 1915, Eliot’s poem follows the Evening adventure of
protagonist Prufrock which begins with delightful remark “Let us go then you
and I” (1), but later in that evening instead of partaking in the sophisticated
night parties and talking to his beloved, indulges full-time in
self-introspection. As a result of routine and mundane city life which is also
directed by hierarchy, Prufrock does not “dare” (56) to open up himself in
front of his beloved due to his timidity fearing that he may be ridiculed and
remains an alienated persona throughout the poem. Similarly, published in 1912,
Mann’s novel follows the journey of disciplined middle-aged man, Aschenbach
from village of Germany to metropolitan city Venice, where he becomes obsessed
in infatuation with a boy Tadzio, follows him everywhere, but alike Prufrock,
cannot express his true feelings to him and acts as a stranger. Due to his
aristocratic “good breeding” (92), he pretends to be indifferent to the
nonchalant city dwellers, though deep inside his heart he carries the affection
from where he comes.
Eliot’s
Prufrock is a modern man affected by mechanized city life. In the beginning of
the poem, he appeals to the second person “you” (1) which is probably the
reader or his beloved to make a visit with him. He shows his hesitancy by
comparing the sky with “a patient etherized upon a table” (3) which is very
distorted form of comparison. He portrays the city roads as “half deserted
streets” (4) which might have been filled with multitudes of people but as they
all appear strangers, he finds the streets deserted and lonely. As Magher puts
it, “Closely related to the questions of self in
modernist works was a sense of alienation. Without that strong sense of
meaning, many authors expressed a sense of being disconnected. This is one of
the central themes of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." (par. 3).
Prufrock also feels disconnected from the crowd and hustle and bustle of the
city. He critiques “cheap hotels”, “sawdust restaurants”, “yellow fog” which
signal to the corruption, pollution, and prostitution in the city. He observes
the happenings of the diverse city as an outsider and cannot find anyone with
whom he can be intimate. As a result, he becomes lonely.
Similarly,
in his journey to Venice, Aschenbach encounters people who are indifferent to
each other. A gondolier on whose gondola he travels, turns out to be working
illegally and “took off” (41) before he could pay him as “he saw the official
waiting for him” (41). In Venice, people conceal the information about the
spreading of lethal disease cholera to him. They are corrupt, degenerate, money
minded and indifferent to other’s suffering. Due to such atmosphere of city,
Ashcenbach who is a prominent aristocratic writer, finds himself alienated. His
only passion there is to watch over Tadzio, with whom he was highly infatuated.
Had it been a rural setting, he would have approached Tadzio easily. But in the
city, where selfish people mind of their own business, Aschenbach found it
difficult to communicate. “Aschenbach looked forward to Tadzio’s entrance and
at times pretended to be busy when it occurred and let the boy pass seemingly
unnoticed” (93). A highly disciplined Apollonian figure at the beginning who
“travelled to seek emotional release and literary regeneration” (Mitchell 165),
Aschenbach loses his control self-control and turns out to be Dyonossian figure
as he meets Tadzio. In his emotional release, he loses the tuning with the
nonchalant city life and finally dies alienated from the sickness of the city.
In
city arena, people are stranger to each other and one has no access about
other’s background. So, they pretend themselves to be something else walking in
a crowd. As Simmel puts it, “The metropolitan type of man – which, of course,
exists in a thousand individual variants – develops an organ protecting him
against the threatening currents and discrepancies of his external environment
which would uproot him. He reacts with his head instead of his heart” (410).
Though Aschenbach falls in love with Tadzio, his love is unusual and distorted
and we come to question if it really is the feeling of love that he has
developed in himself. The homosexual infatuation is in itself distorted form of
love and when it is with a person who is decades junior to him, it is more
problematic. Prufrock also talks about the hypocrisy of modern man. There are
women who come and go talking of Michelangelo, but in reality, they know
nothing of his artifact. They are talking about art merely to exhibit they are
high class people. “There will be time, there will be time/To prepare a face to
meet the faces that you meet;/There will be time to murder and create” (26-28).
The modern people prepare themselves differently to encounter different people.
They change their face very often. They use their brain instead of heart and
are money minded. As one cannot present his real face to others due to the fear
of being outcaste from city society, he loses his real self and becomes an
indifferent, alienated figure.
Unlike
Aschenbach, though Prufrock belongs to the modern city and he has “known
known
them all already, known them all:/ Have known the evenings, mornings,
afternoons,/ I have measured out my life with coffee spoons” (50-52), he fails
to connect to the people with whom he is already habitual. He has been living
the same mundane life for a long period of time, but yet he has no
self-confidence to disclose his heart to them. He has wasted his life for
trivial tea parties, but never succeeded in finding a soulmate. He maintains a
perpetual distance even to the girl he loves. It is an irony to call the poem
love song, where there is no romance at all. Prufrock likes mermaids, who are
the emblem for the women falls, to sing to him but he does “not think that they
will sing to” him (127). As George Williamson alludes, Prufrock’s love song “is
being divided between passion and timidity; it is never sung in the real world.
For this poem develops a theme of frustration, of emotional conflict,
dramatized by you and I” (66). Alike Aschenbach, Prufrock is utterly
pessimistic and is self-conscious about his inferiority and disability to
communicate. At the end of the poem, he imagines to be drowned which is an
emblem for death until humanity wakes him up. Similarly, Aschenbach also
suffers the fate of death at the end from the sickness of city. Though he
discovers that the city is drowning in the sea of cholera, instead of leaving
the city for safe passage or informing the family of Tadzio, so that his
beloved will be saved, he “said nothing and stayed on” (125) until he ascends
to “deep slumber” (141). He shows blasé attitude even to the boy he loves,
perplexing the readers about the genuineness of his love. Thus, both the
characters are suffering from the cynicism of city life as a result of
dehumanizing nature of modernity.
Aschenbach
and Prufrock do nothing to express themselves. They fail to act. They fail to
connect to the world. They are reluctant to fling the gossamer thread so that
it would catch someone’s heart like in Walt Whitman’s poem. As a result, they
are alienated and isolated from the society. The hypocrisy of the modern city
life conceals them from being open to all. As “the money economy dominates the
metropolis” (Simmel 411), there are several class hierarchy prevalent. As a
result, an individual does not possess free will express himself openly.
Prufrock believes his personality is constructed by his hairstyle, his morning
coat, color and necktie. This is a fragmented sense of identity. So, if he goes
to talk with his beloved he fears if her colleagues will mock him “how his hair
is growing thin” (52). He feels low self-esteem as he lacks the material looks
and possession. By this example Eliot shows how people are spiritually
paralyzed in city and how they have become mere consumerist in nature.
To
conclude, the low self-confidence and the alienation of Prufrock and Aschenabch
in Eliot’s poem and Mann’s is due to the mundane modern city life of the modern
men. Both the characters appear as flaneur or dandy and are busy in observing
other people in the city crowd. They stroll around the “half deserted” city
streets, but cannot open up to the people they love. To show this alienated
mentality of the characters, both the writer use stream of consciousness
technique in their works, where the characters thoughts are directly presented
without the veil of narrator’s perception. As they cannot communicate with the
other city dwellers and are all alone among the multitudes of people flowing,
they indulge in self-introspection rather than talking with the people they meet.
Modern men have introverted personality and have tendency to conceal their
emotions in their heart. Their identity is fragmented. They are comprehended by
the dress they wear and the way they appear. That’s why Aschenbach visits a
saloon to refine his looks and look younger, rather than approaching Tadzio
directly and expressing his inner feeling towards him. The spirituality and
inner beauty of a person is dead in the modern city. Modern men are stuffed
with arrogance and selfishness that they maintain hierarchy and distance with
others.
If
Prufrock had no criticism for corruption and hypocrisy of the city life or if
Aschenbach could remain rational in Venice and had not developed the intimate
feelings for the boy, they both would have adapted rightfully with the city and
would not have faced the dire consequences at the end. But a man of artistic
sense and reservations fails to accommodate in the city life, as a result, he
disintegrates in the sickness of the city. Mann in his novel shows how writers and
artists are alienated in city life. Similarly, Eliot also portrays modern man
as an alienated figure in his poem. The causes behind the alienation is the
blasé attitude, hypocrisy and money minded nature of the city dwellers.
Works
Cited
Eliot, T. S. “The Love
Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” T.S Eliot: Collected Poems 1909-1962.
New
York: Harcourt Inc, 1963. Pdf.
Magher, Maria. “How Is the Poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock" Modernism?”. The
Pen and The Pad. 28 Aug,
2017. Web.
http://penandthepad.com/poem-the-love-song-j-alfred-prufrock-modernism-19898.html
Mann,
Thomas. Death in Venice. New York: Dover Publications Inc, 1995. Print.
Mitchell,
Donald. Benjamin Britten Death in Venice. London: Cambridge University
Press,
1987. Pdf.
Simmel, Georg. “The
metropolis and mental life”. The Sociology if Georg Simmel. Ed. Kurt
H.
Wolf. New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1964. Pdf.
Williamson, George. A
Reader’s Guide to T. S. Eliot. London: Thames and Hudson, 1971.
Pdf.
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