T.S. Eliot’s Poetic Techniques: Fragmentation and Scavenging
T.S. Eliot’s Use of Fragmentation and Juxtaposition
A key characteristic of this poem is its use of fragmentation and juxtaposition. Eliot maintained his interest in fragmentation throughout his career, adapting the technique in his works. Here, the subjects undergoing fragmentation are mental focus and imagery. In The Waste Land, it is modern culture that splinters. In the Four Quartets, we see fragments of philosophical systems. Eliot’s use of formal structure suggests that fragmentation, though anxiety-provoking, is productive. Had he used free verse, the poem might seem more nihilistic. The imagery also suggests that something new can be made from ruins. The hypothetical encounters at the poem’s center, though discontinuous, lead to a dark epiphany. Eliot introduces the image of the scavenger, which recurs in his later poetry. Prufrock imagines himself as “a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.” Crabs, as scavengers, live off refuse. Eliot’s discussions of his poetic technique suggest that making something beautiful from the refuse of modern life, like a crab sustaining itself on garbage, may be the highest form of art. This subverts romantic ideals about art, suggesting that fragments may be reintegrated and that art may be therapeutic for a broken world. In The Waste Land, crabs become rats, and the optimism fades, but here Eliot asserts the potential of scavenging.
Prufrock’s Role and the Shattered Dream
“Prufrock” ends with the hero assigning himself a role in Shakespeare’s plays. While not a Hamlet, he may be useful as “an attendant lord, one that will do / To swell a progress, start a scene or two…” This implies a continuity between Shakespeare’s world and ours, that Hamlet is still relevant. Implicitly, Eliot, who created an “attendant lord,” may create another Hamlet. While “Prufrock” ends with a devaluation of its hero, it exalts its creator. Or does it? The last line suggests otherwise—that when the world intrudes, when “human voices wake us,” the dream is shattered: “we drown.” With this line, Eliot dismantles the romantic notion that poetic genius triumphs over the destructive forces of the modern world. Eliot the poet is little better than his creation, differing from Prufrock only by retaining some hubris. Eliot’s poetic creation mirrors Prufrock’s soliloquy: both are expressions of aesthetic ability that seem out of place in the modern world. This realistic, anti-romantic outlook sets the stage for Eliot’s later works, including The Waste Land.