As a man who does not receive any attention and fantasizes about women's arms, Prufrock is unable to make another step in his life, thus he measures out his achievements in life with one of the smallest and most insignificant things in life -- coffee spoons. The author is referring to the normal occurance of coffee or tea during social situations during the time period.
Measuring out life (so vast a thing) with a coffee spoon (so litle a quantity can be measured by that) denotes the enormosness of the task.
Good analysis. Depressive alcoholics are daily drowning – their minds anchored to the bottom of their glass(es). ". Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Good job! Replies. Already a member? His God stands outside my God.” (D. H. Lawrence), ‘And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.’ (Friedrich Nietzsche) #1, ‘And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you’ (Friedrich Nietzsche) #2, ‘It’s wanting to know that makes us matter. What is the effect of repeating words like "yellow" and... What is the theme of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"? Really like your analysis on this crucial and quirky line in the poem.
You can turn bitter and cynical, always griping about how you’ve been cheated and how you’ve failed so abysmally. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. I have a very dear friend who recently battled (and beat!) Characterize the tone of Eliot’s "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock?
A metaphor is a measuring. We begin to take stock of our accomplishments and realize how meager they really are.
Did it not ebb and flow in waves? Life is like a journey through a forest of wolves is a good one: the unknown, threatening territory that is filled with rabid predators. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!’ (Emily Brontë,Wuthering Heights). The whole poem creates a mediocre yet depressing setting through Elliot's diction; however, one line truly stood out to me, being: "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons".
Anonymous. No one in corporate America cares that you were interviewed for your college’s newspaper. I totally agree with the last line of your paragraph. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / But, in talking with my friend I’m convicted by the knowledge that my focus is all wrong. Educators go through a rigorous application process, and every answer they submit is reviewed by our in-house editorial team. Her mother died in her early 50’s of cancer and at least one other close female relative as well, so my friend has always considered her life expectancy to be about 50.
No one cares that you were the President of a special interest club or that you graduated summa cum laude now that you have a job (and not that dream job everyone’s always talking about, either). The two sid... "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons". This statement evokes careful precision: Prufrock rations his life in slight doses, not allowing himself joy or excesses. This is beyond me, this fish. What are the benchmarks of success and who decided them? And here she is having conquered it and trying to find a vision for the next phase of her life, the phase she’d always expected not to live through. There is an element of forethought, as well: "I have measured out my life" is ambiguous time-wise. Reply. 10 Answers. I do that, measure my life. The casualties so far include having children (infertility is NOT a fun challenge), building a career in Latin America (where we’re from and have always wanted to return) and the Doctorate degree (yeah… still trying to make up my mind about that). Sam- I absolutely love and agree with your paragraph on the coffee spoons line!!! Sam, I, too, found this line to be very depressing yet striking. Answer Save.
Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. How trivial!
It’s not even about love or time, and if I were asked what this poem was about, I could write so much. (Shakespeare, Hamlet) #2, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’ (Socrates) #1, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’ (Socrates) #2, ‘Man comes and tills the ground and lies beneath’ (Alfred Lord Tennyson, ‘Tithonus’), ‘You’ve been a long way away …’ (Brief Encounter), ‘Art is a lie that makes us realize truth’ (Pablo Picasso), ‘Wedged as we are between two eternities of idleness, there is no excuse for being idle now.’ (Anthony Burgess), ‘They were careless people, Tom and Daisy …’ (F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby), “I am not the measure of creation. Each day exactly the same as the last.
Start your 48-hour free trial and unlock all the summaries, Q&A, and analyses you need to get better grades now. Change ). This is not a self-help/motivational blog.
For Eliot, in the granules of coffee there is a narrowing of human value or worth. We are entitled to succeed not just on reaching the destination but also by living the journey. Here I am, 29 and I’ve been feeling like I’m surrounded by the corpses of my dreams. March 2, 2014 by andymou Leave a comment. It just seemed like a simple time and love poem, but after some detailed analysis, it now holds so many aspects. Favorite Answer. To feel your life is no more than the eternal recurrence of coffee spoons proves that Prufrock is haunted by a life wasted in morose and pointless reflection. T.S. ‘42’ (Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), ‘We live as we dream. It is at this time that you mutter, “Well, that sucks”, and then you can do one of the following things. So many of us who are somewhere between the Gen-Xers adn Gen-Yers (born in the early 80’s so we really missed enough not to be Gen-Xers, but we’re too old to really be Gen-Yers) get to this place after college where the reality of life begins to set in.
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; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room.
When Prufrock says, in the poem's seventh stanza, "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons," what he means is that his life has always been carefully controlled and predictable—in …
For so long she had measured her life by the inevitability of cancer. She jokes that she looked at her husband a few months ago and realized that she’s stuck!