Student Question
How do Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and Kafka's The Metamorphosis criticize modern culture and portray the modern man's fear of losing spirituality and identity?
Quick answer:
Kafka and Eliot both portray man in the modern era as hopeless, deracinated, and alienated from his environment. The only possibility for survival lies in being too ignorant to realize the depths to which one has sunk, and, since Gregor and Prufrock are both abnormally sensitive and aware of their situation, they are both doomed.
Kafka's The Metamorphosis and Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" were both published in 1915, while the First World War was still in progress. Indeed, Eliot began writing his poem well before the war began. Modernism, however, had clearly arrived as a literary and artistic movement, and its adherents greeted the modern era with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Kafka and Eliot, it is safe to say, were two of the least enthusiastic. Both see the modern age as frightening and disgusting.
In "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," the speaker finds refuge from a sordid urban environment in a world of artificial gentility. He and his companion walk through
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells.
Here, there is yellow fog and water standing in drains. Inside, there is the clatter of teacups and spoons. Both worlds, however, are equally tedious, lonely, and unheroic. The speaker is so timid, hopeless, and deracinated that a simple expression of affection or any attempt to break through the banality seems like a superhuman effort. Years of dehumanizing superficiality have made him a poor specimen of humanity, even by the standards of the pretentious, superficial circles in which he moves. At one point, he decides,
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
Like Gregor Samsa, Prufrock lives in a world where all the gods and heroes are dead and only the vermin survive. Also like Gregor, he shows that when the vermin are sensitive and thoughtful enough to realize that they are vermin, even survival becomes impossible.
Get Ahead with eNotes
Start your 48-hour free trial to access everything you need to rise to the top of the class. Enjoy expert answers and study guides ad-free and take your learning to the next level.
Already a member? Log in here.