March 5

AGENDA:

1. Collaboration on analysis

HW:   Paper Assignment – Close Reading 

 Overview – This assignment is essentially trying to get you to focus in on the importance of the synecdochal moment – that is, the importance of the part to the whole. You will be given a choice of quotes from ―Prufrock, and what you’ll basically be doing is dissecting them: explaining why those words were chosen above all other words, why that word order (or repetition) is significant, what that figure of speech implies, and how these parts all relate to the whole of the poem. You will, in short, be examining the whole through the ―keyhole of one part. 

Directions: 

1. From the list below, choose a significant quote from ―Prufrock. 

2. In your brainstorming, ask (and answer) questions such as the following: 

Why that word? * Why that image? 

Why that word order? * What tone or emotion does this evoke? 

Most of all, what does this moment reveal about Prufrock? Does it make me sympathize with him? Pity him? Be frustrated with him? Understand him? 

3. You will be answering two major questions in your paper: 

a. What does this moment reveal about the soul and self of J.Alfred Prufrock? 

b. What is the message Prufrock is delivering to us through the words of this poem? 

4. Organize your thoughts into a coherent pattern. Address the quote chronologically – that is, in the order of the words. 

5. Make sure you explain the overall ―picture of the poem for the reader. What happens before your quote? What happens after? Where are we in our ―journey with Prufrock? Though you will be focusing most of your time analyzing the specific quote you have been given, you absolutely must ―locate the quote in the poem, giving us a sense of where it fits into the poem as a whole. Please look at how this is done in the example we will go over in class. 

6. Spend most of your time in analysis, bringing out the ideas you developed during brainstorming. 

7. As always, you are to turn in work which is entirely the product of your own mind working alone. 

Choice of Quotations from “Prufrock” 

1. In the room the women come and go 

Talking of Michelangelo. 

2. 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, 

And time for all the works and days of hands 

That lift and drop a question on your plate… 

3. Time for you and time for me. 

And time yet for a hundred indecisions, 

And for a hundred visions and revisions, 

Before the taking of a toast and tea. 

4. For I have known them all already, known them all: 

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons… 

5. Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes 

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . . 

6. But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, 

Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter, 

I am no prophet--and here's no great matter… 

7. I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, 

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 

And in short, I was afraid. 

8. And would it have been worth it, after all, 

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, 

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, 

Would it have been worthwhile, 

To have bitten off the matter with a smile, 

To have squeezed the universe into a ball 

To roll it toward some overwhelming question, 

To say: `` I am Lazarus, come from the dead, 

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all''-- 

If one, settling a pillow by her head, 

Should say: ``That is not what I meant at all. 

That is not it, at all.'' 

9. No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; 

Am an attendant lord, one that will do 

To swell a progress, start a scene or two, 

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, 

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous; 

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; 

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous-- 

Almost, at times, the Fool. 

10. I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. 

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. 

I do not think that they will sing to me. 

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves 

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back 

When the wind blows the water white and black. 

11. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea 

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 

Till human voices wake us, and we drown