The Speaker’s Outlook on Life in T.S. Eliot’s Love Song of J. Albert Prufrock and Wallace Stevens’ the Emperor of Ice Cream

The Speaker’s Outlook on Life in T.S. Eliot’s Love Song of J. Albert Prufrock and Wallace Stevens’ The Emperor of Ice Cream

Poetry uses a numerous devices and technics to engage the audience into the reading. However, the main purpose of the poetry is to transfer the writer’s message to the readers and make the readers reflect on the poetry text. Furthermore, the reader’s reflections on the poetry may create a variety of interpretations of a particular text and each interpretation deserves to exist because when the reader engages himself in reading he or she develops one’s abstract thinking and imagination. Although, the text of the poem helps the readers to immerse themselves into thinking about the main ideas of a text, but the author aims to bring all the ideas through the speaker to the reader because the speaker sets a tone and mood of the poem. Moreover, in most cases, the author speaks his message himself through the speaker’s character. For instance, in T.S. Eliot’s Love Song of J. Albert Prufrock, the speaker’s name is Albert Prufrock and he holds a responsibility of delivering the themes of the poem to the readers and the readers can build their own understanding by analysing the speaker and the whole picture in the text. On the other hand, the speaker in Wallace Stevens’ The Emperor of Ice Cream remains unknown, but he allows the readers put their attention to his words instead of his character. Also, the speakers in both poems differently view the concept of human’s life and survival in the world. The Speaker in T.S. Eliot’s Love Song of Albert Prufrock expresses fear of life while in Wallace Stevens’ The Emperor of Ice Cream the speaker conveys the idea that life should be filled with joy and pleasure.

In T.S. Eliot’s Love Song of J. Albert Prufrock, the speaker expresses the fear of life through his uncertainty and indecisiveness. Prufrock demonstrates his life as a pointless being without a purpose and because of his lack of ambitions, he became a passive observer of his life. Furthermore, Prufrock because of his unawareness became unable to make decisions and hide his personality among the crowds. Consequently, Prufrock creates an impression of a person who never lived but only pointlessly existed. For example, Griffiths interprets T.S. Eliot’s Love Song of J. Albert Prufrock by applying Heidegger’s ontological analysis of human existence (110). To demonstrate, Griffiths uses Love Song of J. Albert Prufrock by using the Heidegger’s concept of Dasein from his book Being and Time (107). Griffiths states that according to Heidegger, Dasein means “there being” or “being in the world” (110). Moreover, Dasein consists of three concepts such as the ‘they’, idle talk and angst and in the article Griffiths applies these concept to interpret the Love Song of J. Albert Prufrock (107). According to the concept of the ‘they’ which means that “every human being lives their life in the world as they and is largely shaped by and immersed in the world” the readers can conclude that this idea takes a major role in Prufrock’s existence (112). By analysing Prufrock’s reflections about his life the readers can assume that the fact that he lost his identity created his uncertainty and weakness. Also, Griffiths explains that “Dasein’s identity is already formed by the context and circumstances created by ‘they’” (112). Therefore, the readers can conclude that the society in which Prufrock lived shaped his lack of self- confidence, so discovering his own authentic self, became more difficult for Prufrock. As a result, because of lack of self-identification Prufrock’s personality became weak, so he became afraid even of life.