Why So Thematic: A Modernist’s Adventure Between Reality and Dreams

T. S. Eliot’s narrator in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and Ernest Hemingway’s protagonist Harry in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” can be characterized as those who are broken by elitism, moving against the ordained construction of time, and dying in the ideology of true love.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro.pdf (google.com)

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot | Poetry Magazine (poetryfoundation.org)

Broken by elitism

The narrator, J. Alfred Prufrock, can measure his life by coffee, tea, and marmalade spoons in his quest for companionship. He has lived the life of a socialite indulging in teatime and art galleries. Although Prufrock has wandered around diverse venues of life, he seems to possess a longingness to escape. Prufrock is part of an elite culture who rely heavily on outward clothing and appearances while remaining forever young. Outward appearances become fragmented in Eliot’s poem and are placed into items like bracelets, dresses, and frocks. These objects of elitism which are femininized by the author represent frivolity and sentimentality. (Do not worry, Gertrude Stein sets these items of sentimentality as powerhouses in Tender Buttons.) Moreover, these fragmented items create a surreal reality where the reader questions whether or not Prufrock is dreaming since Prufrock cannot remember whether or not he slipped or fell asleep. Life is hard at the top. Prufrock even criticizes himself for presuming his right to downgrade or question elitism.

In Hemingway’s short story, Harry goes on a pricey safari in Africa to inspire his pen. He uses his wife’s money to adopt a life of luxury in the hopes of writing the next best seller or pretending to be writing the next best seller. Although Harry surrounds himself with materialism he is still lonely and isolated. On a photoshoot, his left leg becomes infected with gangrene; and, in a fever, Harry’s reality moves back and forth between the Harry-who-was and the Harry-who-is. Harry begins to lament over his choice of wanting an easy life over the poverty that comes with writing. He fantasizes of writing a grand epic but never physically carries it out. He even tries to get his wife on board with dictating his last words. As he is dying (e.g., leaving the material world) he finally unleashes the part of his imagination he kept dormant. Not until Harry becomes bed ridden by gangrene does he question whether or not he lived an honest life; he even goes as far as stating he is filled with rot and poetry. His accumulation of wealth did not give him the keys in unlocking immortality.

Moving against time

Both protagonists go against the perceived order of time. The narrator, Harry, is trapped in the slow sweats and pains of memories and opportunities wasted (e.g., he never matures). He is living in the past while dying in the present. The span of Prufrock’s youth moves quickly from a tavern, a parlor, a beach, and to the bottom of the sea. Prufrock lives in presumptions and not reality. He lives in his assumptions before he makes a move. Prufrock’s women are out of reach but are also in his bed. He claims he knows women but he struggles in his desire to know women more. Narrating the story of the day one dies suggests one is living life backwards. Likewise, Harry’s reversal of time is done while dying, too. The awareness of his deadly infection inspires his mind to remember events he wanted to write about. In a feverish death-is-coming state, he is living the part of his youth he could have changed. Harry states “It was a puff, as of a wind that makes a candle flicker and the flame go tall” (Hemingway 18). This quote represents Harry’s belief in death’s influence (e.g., puff of wind) restores honesty back into one’s life. When Harry states he traded his life for comfort, he begins to realize how noble men exist in dreams. The dream-time-fields can expand and move in many directions. In one flashback, Harry gives the last of his morphine pills to a man who was going to die. Harry’s humanity moves in reverse through flashbacks and dreams. However, Harry’s reality would have been grander if he would not have indulged his hedonistic appetite of wanting money over talent. Once Harry begins to degrade his imagination begins to soar in a series of flashbacks leading to one final adventure where he is lifted onto an airplane flown over Kilimanjaro.

Dying in the ideology of love

Love dies in the eyes of both men who claimed love mattered most. Prufrock is almost willing to die, like Lazarus, and be resurrected if coming back was worth it; it matters most if one can be rewarded. However, Harry’s true love is split between his failure to write what mattered to loving the one woman who mattered. In one flashback, Harry sends out a letter to a former lover, he constantly quarreled with. He believes quarreling is the definition of love. The fact he does not quarrel, as much, with his present-rich-wife makes him believe the former woman, in his flashback, was the woman he was destined to be with. For Eliot, “Women come and go” suggests women are frivolously moving, or chatting it up, in elusive snippets. These women transform from pale parlor ladies with dresses skirting the floors, to violent sea combing Mermaids wailing at the top of their lungs. This ideology of love as shifting creates anxiety and a place of purgatory where one faces “a hundred visions and revisions, / Before the taking of a toast and tea” (Eliot). Thus, this search for love (revisions) makes Prufrock grow old and thin by the time he is ready for tea (death). In addition, Harry wants love but refuses to change his selfish ways. He tells Helen he no longer loves her and is full of “Rot and poetry. Rotten poetry” in which he is the king of love’s “dunghill” (Hemingway 7). In a flashback, Harry remembers taking a woman away from a British soldier, making love to her, and then deserting her the next day. Battling for a woman, stealing her heart, or connecting on a physical plane did not move Harry to love deeply. In Harry’s final dream, he is placed back into his ego where he goes to die on nature’s loftiest, purest peak overcoming snow leopards while transforming into the Yeti of Kilimanjaro. Whereas Eliot’s narrator passes into old age, thins out, (probably goes deaf) and is thrown into a violent sea of regret. The ideology of love conquering all drowns him at the end of his adventure.

Works Cited

Eliot, T. S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock.

Hemingway, Ernest. “The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories.” Google Books, books.google.com/books?id=QjgiXnMHHtIC.